FT8 signals heard on 28 MHz - Wed 19th Dec 2018

The conditions on 28 MHz for the last one to two weeks have been pretty awful with slim pickings. There was however a nice mid-Winter Sporadic-E opening to Europe on Wednesday the 19th of December.

It started quiet enough with VP8LP in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic appearing as the third station of the day.

114845 -10  1.6  678 ~  CQ MM0HVU IO85
114845 -14 -0.4 1337 ~  CQ G0OYQ IO93
114915 -20  1.6  678 ~  CQ MM0HVU IO85
123300 -19 -0.1 1865 ~  CQ VP8LP GD18

What was suprising about this was that the band appeared dead. I had the rig turned on and I heard nothing. I glanced at the screen at one point and noticed VP8LP had been heard.

In the afternoon at about 14:15 UTC, the band opened up with several hours of Sporadic-E to Europe.

What's interesting about all these signals is that they were all using the new version of FT8 i.e. WSJT-X Version 2.0. If they had been using the older versions like version 1.8 or 1.9, I wouldn't have heard them as the two systems are incompatible.

It just goes to show that a lot of people have upgraded already and are not waiting for the end of the year to change.