Thanks to an UK-based aurora text alert, I was made aware of a Kp=5 event mid-morning today.
By tea time, the event had grown to G3 levels. I could hear echoey FT8 signals when pointing south with my 2-ele beam, so a good indication it should be turned north!
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| Significant 50MHz FT8 signal spread due to aurora. |
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| Wow! |
Sure enough, there was MM5DWW busy working an aurora scatter pile-up. He wasn't very strong, but was certainly stable and perfectly readable, even at a normal speaking speed.
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| All turn to the north! 12m Yagi and 6m quad eagerly await aurora scatter. The quad is lower than the Yagi, and only shows a small degree of interaction when up. |
I put in a number of calls, but no joy for a while amongst others in Scotland who were catching stronger conditions than in Wales.
Just before I had to get the kids, I managed to get through, taking a couple of repeat efforts to get the complete callsign across. Here's the HRD recording:
Very happy with that QSO - the first aurora SSB contact since January 01, 2016!
A couple of hours later, aurora-Es kicked in, with spectacular signal strengths to the east and northeast:
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