Monday 22 June 2020

Alaska - on 28MHz!

Quite amazed to see my 28MHz FT8 signal achieve a peak -03dB SNR/2500Hz with KL7TC at 11:16UT this morning.

T|he great circle path is a lot shorter than looking at a flat map leads one to believe - just over 4000 miles.


Even so, it's an intriguing path at the peak of midsummer, and the strength of my ~25W signal, coming from a vertical delta loop operated at its first harmonic and so with quite a high pattern, must point to Es.

And, yes, I did check with Bill that he wasn't listening remotely (he wasn't).

This therefore seems to be a westward polar path that is, to the east, leading to lots of Europe-Japan QSOs all the way up to 6m at the moment.

NLC coverage a couple of days ago.

When you look at how NLC - intimately related to, and essentially the visual manifestation of PMSE - is now covering the polar regions down to mid latitudes, this kind of DX is perhaps not really surprising - though many will argue it is some big mystery, devoid of explanation.