Opening to the USA on 28 MHz... Fri 11th Jan 2019

Well today was a bit of a suprise! It started off quiet enough with just a handful of FT8 signals from around Europe on 28 MHz. It just seemed like a typical poor day until around 17:40 UTC when two signals from the USA popped out of the noise.

174345 -14 -0.8  971 ~  CQ N4TL FM05
175300 -16 -0.6 1109 ~  CQ N3GWZ FM19

Looking at the PSK reporter website, it seems as if I was the only person in Europe to hear them.

Local sunset here in Cork was at 16:47 UTC so I presume it was sunset related.

At about 19:13 to 20:25, there were a bunch of signals from Brazil in South America. There were some Sporadic-E signals in there from Spain and Portugal as well so that would have helped the signals from Brazil reach up into northern Europe.

191345 -21 -0.3  542 ~  EB8AC PY2EZL GG67
191945 -16 -0.3  547 ~  EB8AC PU2MVE GG66
192545  -2 -0.1  637 ~  2E0XXO PU1JSV R-15
195015 -17  0.2  645 ~  CQ PY2JOS GG66
195315  -8 -0.5  709 ~  CQ G8KHF IO92
195500 -16 -0.9 1235 ~  G0OYQ EA3IEF JN12
200000 -22 -0.3 1196 ~  PY2CP PY2UG GG66
200215  -4 -0.3  821 ~  G4XYT PY2RJ RR73
201630 -11 -0.4 1890 ~  CQ CS7ANU IN51
202515 -14 -0.3 1493 ~  CQ DX PY2CP GG66

Solar Flux is at 68 so pretty much at rock bottom of the cycle.