Well, neither the weather nor the Tropo forecast (see picture) did look like we would get a big lift but Friday early afternoon it really happend – EA1MX appeared on 2 m here in Northeastern Germany! Would not have thought this would ever be possible as the path from here to EA1 is not really made for tropo as there are lots of different mountain chains inbetween that usually destroy the tropo path. Whenever there was tropo from EA1 to DL in the past it usually was only about 200 km more westerly if it ever reached into the north. So you can certainly imagine how surprised I was to really hear EA1MX when arriving at the QTH at 12:45z to prepare for the WWDX-SSB contest this weekend.
Worked a few French stations after EA1MX until the band closed about an hour later. Strangly I could also work GW8JLY “out of the path” and he was the only U.K. station audible at all at that time! The band open again an hour later and I could work a few more F’s as well as EA1GCN. Interestingly most of the French guys were rather weak and there was lots of QSB confirming condx were not very stable. In general it was on & off during the whole afternoon and evening.
Later on a few more EA1’s popped up as well as EA2XR. Signals improved a lot during the evening and almost all of the Spanish guys were reaching s9 signal levels, really amazing! But the most fascinating QSO was made with EA1HRR over 1.680 km who was using just 30 watts and a small 5 ele Yagi antenna! Now how cool’s that? 😎
Besides working what felt like hundreds of French stations 😉 Dave, G7RAU, was in at 59(9) and over. Seems he caught the northwestern-most entry into the duct, at least into our direction. The U.K. could work “cross-lift” from the northwest down to southeast, i.e. into Southern Germany as well as Austria and Hungary (there was at least one QSO from G to I2 reported, too) while it was northeast to southwest from up here. Every now and then another G popped out of the noise and “out of path” overhere, too, but vanished again after some minutes. Not so with Dave! He was like a local beacon all night long. 😉
Keeping in mind I wanted to get up early Saturday morning to do the HF contest I finally called it a day at 23:30z. Just before closing down I was called by EA1PB who gave me my new tropo ODX of 1.829 km! 😎 And F8GGD sent a link to a Youtube video he made of me calling CQ over the 1.335 km path from JO73ce to IN95uq … seems I was loud enough. 😉
Finally here’s the log excerpt of the more interesting contacts > 700 km:
------------------------------------------------------------------ DATE TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PRO. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 23/10/2015 12:49 EA1MX IN73XK 549 599 2 m. CW TR 1722 23/10/2015 12:57 FØFYP JN37LO 51 58 2 m. SSB TR 805 23/10/2015 13:01 F4ULC JNØ6FU 55 59 2 m. SSB TR 1205 23/10/2015 13:07 GW8JLY IO81JM 57 57 2 m. SSB TR 1194 23/10/2015 13:16 F1NZC JN15MR 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 1154 23/10/2015 13:38 F8GGD IN95UQ 519 519 2 m. CW TR 1335 23/10/2015 15:41 F5XU JN15MT 57 57 2 m. SSB TR 1147 23/10/2015 15:44 F6APE IN97QI 55 57 2 m. SSB TR 1234 23/10/2015 15:49 F5CKB IN97SL 51 55 2 m. SSB TR 1215 23/10/2015 15:52 EA1GCN IN73DN 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 1810 23/10/2015 15:55 F6GNR IN97FD 59 56 2 m. SSB TR 1303 23/10/2015 16:10 F4FRG IN98KE 51 52 2 m. SSB TR 1211 23/10/2015 16:11 GW8JLY IO81JM 54 52 2 m. SSB TR 1194 23/10/2015 16:23 EA1BA IN73XI 55 59 2 m. SSB TR 1729 23/10/2015 16:46 FØGOW IN96TT 55 59 2 m. SSB TR 1256 23/10/2015 17:39 F1GGS JN15OV 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 1132 23/10/2015 17:45 F8EMH JN29VL 55 57 2 m. SSB TR 715 23/10/2015 17:50 ON4LDP JO1ØUN 579 559 2 m. CW TR 777 23/10/2015 18:00 F6IFX/P IN87XC 55 57 2 m. SSB TR 1336 23/10/2015 18:08 F6DKW JN18CS 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 971 23/10/2015 18:14 FØFKQ IN88SN 51 52 2 m. SSB TR 1273 23/10/2015 18:16 F1DRR JN18BX 52 55 2 m. SSB TR 963 23/10/2015 18:18 FØFMJ JNØ8FK 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 1098 23/10/2015 18:24 F6DLA JNØ7SE 52 59 2 m. SSB TR 1119 23/10/2015 18:29 HB9HLI JN37JB 53 59 2 m. SSB TR 861 23/10/2015 18:36 EA1MX IN73XK 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 1722 23/10/2015 18:42 EA1HRR IN83JJ 529 579 2 m. CW TR 1679 23/10/2015 18:51 F6KHM IN78RJ 419 529 2 m. CW TR 1416 23/10/2015 19:08 F1MOZ IN93RS 41 51 2 m. SSB TR 1503 23/10/2015 19:10 F1NMP IN95WA 57 58 2 m. SSB TR 1378 23/10/2015 19:12 F6CIS IN94WL 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 1422 23/10/2015 19:19 F5OYS JNØ5DR 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 1299 23/10/2015 19:27 F1HSU JN15AK 54 52 2 m. SSB TR 1230 23/10/2015 19:30 G7RAU IO9ØIR 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 1094 23/10/2015 19:42 HB9HLM/P JN37KD 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 850 23/10/2015 19:51 G4MKF IO91HJ 579 559 2 m. CW TR 1076 23/10/2015 20:12 EA2XR IN83KI 57 57 2 m. SSB TR 1677 23/10/2015 20:24 F5EAN JNØ6CP 57 58 2 m. SSB TR 1235 23/10/2015 20:31 F5JNX JN37PV 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 764 23/10/2015 21:11 F1AGW JN18GU 52 55 2 m. SSB TR 946 23/10/2015 21:13 F4EWP JNØ7BV 52 55 2 m. SSB TR 1153 23/10/2015 21:16 F4NYC IN95QH 53 51 2 m. SSB TR 1383 23/10/2015 21:19 F5SE/P JN19XH 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 832 23/10/2015 21:48 F2MM IN95LP 51 55 2 m. SSB TR 1381 23/10/2015 21:57 F1CXX JN18AT 59 57 2 m. SSB TR 978 23/10/2015 22:01 FØFVK JN18IB 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 989 23/10/2015 22:10 F4FFH IN99KC 55 55 2 m. SSB TR 1159 23/10/2015 22:17 FØEUA JN16QS 51 52 2 m. SSB TR 1051 23/10/2015 22:18 F5PZR JN18NT 56 55 2 m. SSB TR 914 23/10/2015 22:19 ON5NY JO1ØMV 57 59 2 m. SSB TR 804 23/10/2015 22:26 F5DE JNØ5DP 539 539 2 m. CW TR 1306 23/10/2015 22:45 HB9EOU JN37KD 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 850 23/10/2015 22:53 G4DHF IO92UU 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 969 23/10/2015 23:03 F6GPT IN94SW 57 57 2 m. SSB TR 1403 23/10/2015 23:03 F4BDG JN18HR 52 52 2 m. SSB TR 949 23/10/2015 23:05 EA1PB IN73CI 52 58 2 m. SSB TR 1829 23/10/2015 23:34 F8GGD IN95UQ 59 59 2 m. SSB TR 1335 ------------------------------------------------------------------