Once upon a time, ham radio was promoted with the slogan "the whole world at your fingertips." Via shortwave it is indeed possible to make worldwide radio connections.
To be successful in this, however, some knowledge of propagation on HF is necessary. During your studies for your radio license, depending on your license, you have already learned a lot about how the ionosphere allows us to make long distance connections.
That the state of the ionosphere depends on solar activity, the time of day and the season is well known. But how do you find out if at a certain moment a connection between point a and b on earth on a certain HF band is possible or not?
A wonderful tool available to radio amateurs for free online is VOACAP. It is a powerful tool to check in real time how to make the most of propagation. In addition, it allows the user to find out at what time of day/night under the current state of the ionosphere a connection can be established on a particular HF band.
VOACAP is actually an abbreviation that stands for "Voice Of America Coverage Analysis Program" and was developed beginning in 1975. For a long time the software had to be paid for, but today it is available free of charge.
In addition to the online version, the software can also be downloaded and installed on a PC.
All information on VOACAP can be found here.
