Another great day on the VHF bands! 😎 MUF was high all morning already. Lots of 6 m activity and cluster spots from Russia hearing Europe. Won’t imagine what happens if Russia is ever allowed to transmit on 6 m … 😉 2 m opened again via Sporadic-E between SP8 and UA6 as well as YU and UA4 but clouds were to far away to be usable from here. Had strong OIRT signals on 4 m from UR and UA6. The band was open in parallel also to SV as well as EA6. Good to catch EA6SA on 4 m after having worked him on 2 & 6 m in the past. 😉 Was not sure where to point the 2 m antenna to. Would the clouds enabling the QSOs in Southeastern Europe move westwards and be reachable from JO73? Or would the MUF direction south rise any further? Decided to keep it straight south …
Luckily I did as a quarter past 11z the following happened: 😎
I quickly QSY’d a few kHz up and called CQ myself and was very lucky to be called by Chris, expeditioning as IK8/PA2CHR in South Italy making my day providing square #545 on 2 m with JM79! 😎 Great stuff after I had missed him in JM87 the days before.
It seemed the MUF would rise up to 2 m again during the afternoon. Indeed it did but once more not reachable from here. While monitoring 144.300 MHz for additional openings I had some more fun on 4 m, too …
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 09:45 EA6SA JM19LO 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1734 09:50 EA6FB JMØ8PW 599 559 4 m. CW ES 1865 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 11:13 IK8XLD JN7ØVO 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1404 11:19 IT9BDM JM77NE 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1780 11:21 IK8/PA2CHR JM79VQ # 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1505 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 14:49 SW8YA KN2ØHS 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1587 15:14 SV1DH KM18VA 59 51 4 m. SSB ES 1839 15:24 SV8CS KMØ7JS 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1787 15:32 SV1QT KM17UW 59 58 4 m. SSB ES 1846 15:43 9H1FL JM75GT 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1932 15:59 9H1PI JM75FW 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1918 17:38 9H1ES JM75FV 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1922 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Also heard were SV5BYR (too weak) and SV9GPV who took too long to recognize the band was open to DL and to QSY into our “sub-band”. A pity, both would have been new ones on 4 m, too. Also monitored Henri, OH3JR, who’s currently active as OJØJR from Market Reef via Meteor Scatter but reflections were not very favourable. Keeping fingers crossed I can catch him maybe tomorrow or on Friday. Chances are low that there will be additional 4 m activities from that small island in the middle of the northern Baltic Sea anytime soon …