Already on Wednesday when looking at the weather forecast I had the gut feeling there was something to come. The F5LEN Tropo Forecast said so, too, so I was eager to see how VHF condx would evolve. Unfortunately Uwe, DL3BQA, was hogging our local station completely so no chance for a single QSO on Thursday. At least he was lucky as there was some local contest in the U.K. so there were hundreds of stations QRV which is seldom during tropo lifts nowadays. He therefor made over 150 QSOs on Thursday and another 150 on Friday, great activity! When he finally left the station late Friday evening I had a chance to switch on the remote. Condx were already weakening dir West then, you could hear signals getting weaker hour by hour but at least I could still work a few nice ones. Super DX was worked between the U.K. and UA1/3 scratching the 2.000 km mark if not even breaking it!
Interestingly while Thursday also saw guys more south, i.e. in JO62/72 working the DX, on Friday we in JO73 were the southern-most guys to take advantage of the propagation. Saturday morning saw a further shift to the east so I could work RX3QFM at a whopping 1.700 km distance although just above the noise while he was a strong signal in Denmark even further away. Lucky to catch KO31 & KO42 for two new squares, too. 😎 By 10 o’clock local time condx where gone except to IO86, could still hear the Angus beacon quite well at 549 but no other DX on the band despite knowing there was still some activity in the U.K. Finally could work GMØBKC/P who just arrived in IO86MN, not far away from the beacon, and who had a nice signal with just 50 watts and a 9 ele Yagi … typical for tropo ducting. You can listen to a CW contact of him below … Made these fine contacts > 800 km:
------------------------------------------------------------------ DATE TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PRO. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 02/10/2015 20:45 G6JFU IO93WT 55 59 2 m. SSB TR 949 02/10/2015 20:46 G4DBN IO93NR 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 998 02/10/2015 20:50 MØCVX IO93RE 51 54 2 m. SSB TR 981 02/10/2015 20:50 MØTLX IO94HW 54 57 2 m. SSB TR 1033 02/10/2015 20:52 G4NBS JOØ2AF 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 958 02/10/2015 20:53 GØLGS/P IO81XW 53 58 2 m. SSB TR 1104 02/10/2015 20:54 G4EKM IO94GV 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 1038 02/10/2015 20:55 G4FPV IO82UC 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 1117 02/10/2015 20:56 M6DJK IO94FW 58 59 2 m. SSB TR 1043 02/10/2015 20:57 MØEMM IO82SQ 55 59 2 m. SSB TR 1115 02/10/2015 20:58 G4VCJ IO94JQ 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 1020 02/10/2015 20:59 G8NVI IO91JO 51 55 2 m. SSB TR 1058 02/10/2015 21:02 MØDZB JOØ2IS 51 53 2 m. SSB TR 903 02/10/2015 21:04 GW1CJJ IO83EG 53 59 2 m. SSB TR 1184 02/10/2015 21:04 MØPNN IO82TS 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 1108 02/10/2015 21:15 G4RRA IO8ØBS 559 559 2 m. CW TR 1263 02/10/2015 21:16 GW7SMV IO81LN 579 579 2 m. CW TR 1181 02/10/2015 21:29 GM4CXM IO75TW 579 589 2 m. CW TR 1232 02/10/2015 21:31 GM4GUF IO85EP 529 549 2 m. CW TR 1182 02/10/2015 21:39 GØGMB IO92NB 579 579 2 m. CW TR 1023 02/10/2015 21:46 UA3LID KO64CN 559 579 2 m. CW TR 1186 02/10/2015 21:48 EU1AI KO33SU 529 549 2 m. CW TR 883 02/10/2015 21:50 EW8CN KO42KP 519 559 2 m. CW TR 983 02/10/2015 21:54 G4FVP IO94FM 559 559 2 m. CW TR 1041 02/10/2015 21:58 EW1W KO33WX 529 559 2 m. CW TR 905 02/10/2015 22:03 GØTPH IO92IP 559 579 2 m. CW TR 1039 02/10/2015 22:25 G4DHF IO92UU 599 599 2 m. CW TR 969 02/10/2015 22:33 G8VHI IO92FM 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 1058 02/10/2015 22:37 GM8IEM IO78HF 51 51 2 m. SSB TR 1342 02/10/2015 22:53 GI6ATZ IO74AJ 51 51 2 m. SSB TR 1326 02/10/2015 22:56 M5MUF IO92JP 539 579 2 m. CW TR 1033 02/10/2015 23:54 GM4ZJI IO86KE 539 559 2 m. CW TR 1159 03/10/2015 00:05 GD3YEO IO74RD 529 559 2 m. CW TR 1236 03/10/2015 05:49 EW8CN KO42KP 539 579 2 m. CW TR 983 03/10/2015 05:58 RX3QFM KO91OO 529 559 2 m. CW TR 1696 03/10/2015 06:00 UT5EL/A KO31LG 559 599 2 m. CW TR 893 03/10/2015 07:38 GMØBKC/P IO86MN 55 54 2 m. SSB TR 1157 ------------------------------------------------------------------
GB3ANG/B on Sunday morning, only DX signal left:
GMØBKC/P – IO86MN – 50 watts & 9 ele Yagi: