Big opening from Ireland to Denmark on 40 MHz - Wed 19th June 2019

Sporadic-E conditions were really good on Wednesday the 19th of June 2019 with some very strong signals on 28 MHz. Propagation extended up into the VHF bands as well with the OZ7IGY beacon in Denmark being heard in Ireland on 28 MHz, 40 MHz and 50 MHz.

The beacon on 40.071 MHz was audible in Ireland for several hours during the morning and was very strong at times.

40 MHz Crossband Contacts... Lloyd EI7HBB in the west of Ireland made the best of conditions to make a 8m/6m crossband SSB contact with SM6BCD in Sweden. This is probably a first EI/SM crossband  contact for 8 metres.

EI7HBB was running 4 watts on 40.250 MHz from one of the Ukrainian transverters into a home made 2 element Moxon in the loft space of his house. He was listening to the Swedish station using a 4 element Moxon on 50.150 MHz.

The distance was 1343 kms.

2019-06-19 10:30:39 EI7HBB (IO53SQ) 40.250 SM6BCD (JO57WQ) 1343 IO53SQ JO57WQ cross band 50150

OZ7IGY Beacon... The OZ7IGY beacon on 40.071 MHz was logged by both Don EI8DJ and myself.

EI8DJ was using a Yaesu FT817 with a ground mounted HF vertical antenna to receive the beacon.

I found that I was getting some really strong signals with my 28 MHz vertical half-wave. I also found out by accident that I could actually hear it with a 2m Slim Jim!

It's probably fair to say that any sort of wire antenna would have heard the signal as long as the local interference was low.

Both EI8DJ and myself used the PI4 software to decode the beacon and to upload the spots to the cluster with Don doing it on three bands.