Tuesday 12 May 2020

Spectacular Es

Es has broken out in very sure order over the past 24 hours, with strong propagation on 10m and 6m.

Beaming the Netherlands with the 12m, 3-ele LFA.

But on 12m, the situation has been nothing short of unbelievable.  Not because there was much DX to be had - there wasn't from this latitude - but because of the strength of signals between, in particular, Wales and the Netherlands.

I've seen short skip signals on 12m many times, but not to the extent that signals reach in excess of +20dB!  Presumably, some of the receivers were using simple stick or wire antennas, making the whole thing even more remarkable.

Incredible short-skip signals to the Netherlands on 12m yesterday.
10m showed strong Es activity all day long, and was still producing FT8 QSOs here at 23:30UT.  WSPR with 1W overnight was spotted in Italy until 01:46UT, and resumed (to Austria) just four hours later.

10m activity late yesterday afternoon.
Well, it's not surprising, given we're at roughly a month before midsummer - though you wouldn't think it, given we have winds coming directly down from the geographic North Pole this week, with temperatures about 12 degrees colder than last week!


1 comment:

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, ES (multihop) was incredible on 10m. Propagation to south America, Carribian, Russia, all over Africa at the same time. At a certain moment I saw some stations from France and east Europe making contacts with JA over longpath late in the evening! Had one QSO with PJ4DX on SSB but was a bit late. Others reported they made several contacts on DX earlier. Unfortunately haven't got my 6m antenna up for now. Planning to do 4m (DX) this year. 73, Bas