70 QSOs

Last evening, well into darkness at 18:00UT, I reached the end - actually I decided to end - a hugely successful day on 12m.

I reached the end of my diary page, split into two, containing no less than 70 QSOs in total.

Just point towards the Sun and enjoy!

The contacts ranged from nearby in the UK to the far south of Argentina.

Interestingly, the propagation became very short skip at times, indicating that 10m was probably open, which indeed it was once I hit the band button.

Believe it or not, this is the 12m waterfall yesterday!

I looked at the NERC atmospheric radar in mid-Wales, where a weak but definite reflection from mesospheric height was being received.

Could a weak layer of meteoric metals (around 8-11UT) have helped propagation yesterday?

It's open to debate, but the radar signal could be distributed metals from the Orionid meteor shower, about four days earlier.  I know from research work (most notably with the Chelyabinsk bolide event in 2013) that this is the time it takes for material to spread around the globe.  The difference with meteors, of course, is that they impact the Earth more or less evenly, and not from a single point like a large bolide.

Logbook full!

So it may be the case - and it has often been suggested - that the good propagation on 12m (and winter Es at 6m) is down to an enhanced input of metals from more significant meteor showers that occur during late autumn and winter months.