P29VR on 28 MHz...

Interesting conditions on the 10 metre band today. After starting off listing on WSPR for about two hours and then having a quick listen around the band, it was soon obvious that the conditions were better than the map on the WSPR website might suggest.

Came across P29FR in Papua New Guinea. He was weak but I could hear him giving 5/5 reports which was a sure sign he was working weak stations. So after a quick scramble in the drawer for the microphone.....one call....and P29FR was in the log! My first QSO since May 2011 ;o)

Conditions seemed to be pretty good around 11am with signals coming through from South-East Asia and Australia even though they were weak. I heard VK6APZ on the West Coast of Australia, HS0ZEX in Phuket Island in Thailand and later, I heard 9M2CQC in Malaysia on WSPR.

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az
2012-10-02 14:44  9M2CQC  28.126119   -16   0  OJ03tb  10   EI7GL  IO51tu  11089  324 

Signals heard on WSPR on 28 MHz...Tues 2nd Oct 2012. Red dots are some of DX stations heard.

I also heard 5Z4/LA9PF in Kenya as well as the ZD9UW expedition on Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic....just about audible but way too weak to work. There were also plenty of signals from Eastern Europe...Ukraine and Russia as well as some strong signals from Cyprus and the Canary Islands.

I was kind of expecting it to open later to the US but it never happened. I heard some weak beacons from Argentina and Brazil but that was about all. I was hearing EA8FF on WSPR up until 18:48 UTC, some 40 minutes after local sunset here.

GW7PEO.......Of the European signals heard on WSPR on 28 MHz, one struck me as strange...GW7PEO in North Wales.

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az
 2012-10-02 14:52 GW7PEO  28.126146  -24 0  IO83gh  5 EI7GL IO51tu 370  246 
 2012-10-02 14:30 GW7PEO  28.126146 -23 0  IO83gh   5  EI7GL IO51tu 370  246 

At 370 kms, it's an odd one. It's very close for Sporadic-E and I didn't seem to hear any of the other UK stations active at the time. It might have been via tropo?.......although I have my doubts. If he was on the west coast then I might think maybe but he is on the coast of North Wales with some high mountains to his south-west. Meteor scatter?.......although the requirement for a two minute burst and the lack of other UK stations tends to rule that one out. The only other possibility that I can think of was that it was via back scatter? F2 or Sp-E?

2012-10-02 14:52 GW7PEO  28.126146   -24 0 IO83gh 5 EI7GL IO51tu 370  246 
2012-10-02 14:50 EA8FF 28.126116 +9 0 IL18pc 2 EI7GL IO51tu 2730 12 
2012-10-02 14:40 EA8FF 28.126116 +8 0 IL18pc 2 EI7GL IO51tu 2730 12 
2012-10-02 14:36 EA5EHS 28.126164 -23 1 IM99wv 2 EI7GL IO51tu 1473 337 
2012-10-02 14:32 EA8FF 28.126116 +7 0 IL18pc 2 EI7GL IO51tu 2730 12 
2012-10-02 14:30 GW7PEO 28.126146 -23 0 IO83gh 5 EI7GL IO51tu 370  246 
2012-10-02 14:26 EA8FF 28.126116 +8 0 IL18pc 2 EI7GL IO51tu 2730 12 

Looking at the WSPR spots above, GW7PEO at -23dB is buried deep in the noise. At roughly the same time, EA8FF is flying in with +8dB......obviously good F2 conditions to the south. My guess is backscatter via F2 but it's impossible to be sure.