AA7FV - new WSPR record

Yesterday saw some strong sporadic E on the upper HF and lower VHF frequencies.  Skip was particularly strong and short on 12m, where PA stations were bounding in on FT8.  10m was more subdued and patchy, but still open to medium distances.  6m also had short skip, with stations only a couple of hundred miles away being worked.

Geomagnetic conditions were fairly quiet, with a small disturbance in the later evening.

But the reception of AA7FV broke all records last night.  In fact, the record (+0dB S/N) was broken at 16:14UT, just after I turned the rig to listening operations, but it got a lot better later:

Wow!

A S/N report of +5dB S/N at 23:14UT from 8154km is just stunning - even from a rhombic with 15dBi gain taking 2W output to about 63W effective output!

Usefully, AE7YQ is just a few miles away from AA7FV and using 5W from a more typical antenna - an email confirmed it is a folded dipole  His signal reached a steadyish -3dB S/N between 23:34 to 23:50UT.  The slight but real difference in timing of strongest signal from each station is most likely attributable to the very narrow beamwidth of the rhombic.

The timing of strongest signal is fairly typical from this region of the US, but the strength is a good 8dB or so above usual quiet geomagnetic conditions.  The enhancement seems to correlate with the field restoring to calm conditions after a minor disturbance - something I've noticed with other enhancements in the past.

I also, incidentally, managed to get to position number 4 in the daily WSPR listening challenge.  I don't take this as a contest, but an indicator of my system performance.  In the past, I've tended to come in at around position number 9 or so.  Last night, even with the rig off for a number of hours, I managed to get to position 4, with which I'm quite impressed!

With the weekend upon us and the careless use of other digital modes, it's unlikely that listening over the next couple of days will be worthwhile.  We'll see...