DH8BQA

Lucky me! Mother nature was calling early this morning and before going back to bed I just checked the MUF on DXMAPS on the smartphone. Glad I did! There was already some ES going on 2 m. Quickly switched on the remote station but it took another 15 minutes until the band opened in JO73. Unfortunately I had high SWR on the remote antenna. 🙁 So could only run 10 watts first and later about 100 watts when things warmed up. Seems a bigger problem in the connection between the 7/8″ coax going up the mast and the last few meters of Aircom+ cable. Heiko, DG1BHA, already tried fixing it twice during the last few weeks but the error always returns sooner or later. Time to fix it permanently! So hope to be able to squeeze in some time during the next visit in about 2 weeks when driving the 700 km home again …  Nevertheless managed some nice QSOs and even worked two new squares … it’s been a while since doing so via Sporadic-E. 😎

Played around a bit with DL4MFM’s Log Analyzer, see screenshot. The following great QSOs were made in two sequential openings, the first one lasting about half an hour to LZ and the second one for another 45 minutes to SV about an hour later:

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TIME   CALLSIGN      LOCATOR  TX    RX     BAND   MODE  PROP.  QRB
------------------------------------------------------------------
06:43  LZ1ZX         KN32IO   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1496
06:50  LZ1KG         KN31CS   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1552
06:51  LZ1VPV        KN22UL   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1464
06:53  LZ1YG         KN22QO   599   599    2 m.   CW    ES    1437
07:00  LZ5SZ         KN32RL   55    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1542
07:18  LZ2QA         KN43EK   55    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1502
08:05  SV7GBR        KN2ØIX   55    55     2 m.   SSB   ES    1569
08:07  SV9CVY        KM25KA   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    2186
08:17  SV2JL         KN1ØLO   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1546
08:20  SV1ELI        KM17XX   55    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1849
08:21  SV1ONV        KM27AX   55    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1852
08:25  SV9IOQ        KM25AL   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    2113
08:33  SV2OXS        KN1ØFF   59    57     2 m.   SSB   ES    1569
08:35  Z32KF         KNØ1SI   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1425
08:39  SV9KNK        KM25FI   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    2139
08:44  SV2DCD        KNØØPL   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1510
------------------------------------------------------------------

Also made a few audio recordings again. Hope you enjoy listening to them! 🙂

LZ1ZX (KN32IO) 1.496 km via ES on 144 MHz:

LZ1KG (KN31CS) 1.552 km via ES on 144 MHz:

SV7GBR (KN20IX) 1.569 km via ES on 144 MHz:

SV9CVY (KM25KA) 2.186 km via ES on 144 MHz:

SV1ONV (KM27AX) 1.852 km via ES on 144 MHz:

Z32KF (KN01SI) 1.425 km via ES on 144 MHz:

SV9KNK (KM25FI) 2.139 km via ES on 144 MHz:

Finally caught the first 2 m ES this year! 🙂 6 m had been hot all afternoon. Later also 4 m opened up nicely. It was kind of masochistic listening to all the activity on 70 MHz and not being able to join the fun. 🙁 But it was a good indicator on how conditions would evolve. Around 16z OIRT started heavily on 4 m direction east so I kept an eye into that direction. Also 6 m was full of TV birdies which suddenly stopped while OIRT was still strong – a clear sign of rapidly rising MUF as with higher MUF skip zone shortens dramatically on 6 m meaning being in a distance to the ES cloud you just won’t receive the low VHF QRM anymore, you would need to move closer to it. But hey, then you would be too close for 2 m over the same cloud. 😉

144 MHz opened at 16:28z but it only lasted for about 1.5 minutes, just enough to complete a CW QSO with US6IEW. The band was more consistent further west, I was not in a perfect position in JO73 geometry-wise. Five minutes later US6IEW popped out of the noise again answering my CQ call, this time in SSB. Band closed again after 2 minutes or so. It then took another 10 minutes to open again, this time for about 8 minutes.

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TIME   CALLSIGN      LOCATOR  TX    RX     BAND   MODE  PROP.  QRB
------------------------------------------------------------------
16:29  US6IEW        KN98FA   599   599    2 m.   CW    ES    1794
16:35  US6IEW        KN98FA   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1794
16:48  UY1HY         KO6ØMA   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1343
16:50  US4IEK        KN87UX   599   599    2 m.   CW    ES    1747
16:54  UX5UL         KO5ØFL   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1153
16:55  US4IEK        KN87UX   59    59     2 m.   SSB   ES    1747
------------------------------------------------------------------

UY1HY and UX5UL were quite short distances on the same cloud that was used by West-DL and PA to work further into Russia and East Ukraine. Seems there were 2 active spots or one really big cloud with different active zones.  Here are a few audio recordings again:

US6IEW 144 MHz Sporadic-E:

UY1HY 144 MHz Sporadic-E:

UX5UL 144 MHz Sporadic-E:

US4IEK 144 MHz Sporadic-E:

The MUF dropped quite rapidly afterwards but 6 m stayed open until late into the night. Sporadic-E even linked into a good Caribbean opening around 11 pm local time … albeit not on 6 but on 10 m. 😉