Opening on 28 MHz to North America - Mon 11th Nov 2019

Monday the 11th of November 2019 was a pretty quiet day on 28 MHz for the most part. Other than a handful of European stations, the best DX to the south on FT8 was ZD7MY on St.Helena. The three exceptional signals however were WU1ITU, K0TPP and KC4QX in the USA.

On the lower bands like 18 MHz, 21 MHz or even 24 MHz, it's no big deal to hear an East-West signal outside of the Sporadic-E season. On 28 MHz and at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, it is.

When the solar flux is very low at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, propagation on 28 MHz via the F2 layer in the ionosphere is usually via North-South paths. As a result, hearing South Africa or South America from Europe on 28 MHz at the moment is nice but not exceptional. Hearing North America is unusual though.

I got just two FT8 decodes today from K0TPP in Missouri. He was 6,267 kms from here which is more than one F2 hop so perhaps there was some Sporadic-E helping to extend the path at one end or the other?

WU1ITU by contrast was much stronger and was at least +14dB here. That's a kind of level where a CW or SSB contact should be easily possible. It was a bit strange that these were the only two US stations that I heard.

KC4QX in Florida was heard much later at 18:43 UTC, about two hours after local sunset. Looking at the PSK Reporter website, it seems as if I was the only one in Europe in Europe to hear him.

Some of the my FT8 decodes are shown below. As you can see, WU1ITU was working Greece, France, Denmark and Spain.

103015 -15 -0.3  862 ~  CQ MM3NRX IO86
113300 -12 -0.5 1366 ~  CQ RA2FL KO04
121145 -12 -0.0  976 ~  CQ IZ2MHO JN45
151515 -11 -0.2  664 ~  WB2PYN K0TPP -03
151545 -10 -0.2  664 ~  WB2PYN K0TPP RR73


153015   8 -0.1 1958 ~  CQ WU1ITU FN65
153115   8 -0.1 1958 ~  CQ WU1ITU FN64
153415  11 -0.1 1957 ~  SV2DCD WU1ITU R+04
153445  10 -0.1 1958 ~  SV2DCD WU1ITU 73
153815  13 -0.1 1957 ~  F8BBL WU1ITU RR73
153845  14 -0.1 1957 ~  CQ WU1ITU FN64
154245   8 -0.1 1956 ~  F8DGY WU1ITU -10
154645   2 -0.2 1955 ~  F6EQZ WU1ITU R-17
154845  -7 -0.2 1954 ~  EA3BMU WU1ITU -10
154915  -9 -0.2 1954 ~  F8TRT WU1ITU -14
155015  -9 -0.1 1954 ~  EA3BMU WU1ITU RR73
155045 -11 -0.2 1954 ~  OZ4VV WU1ITU -16
161415  -3 -0.2  923 ~  HK4SAN ZD7MY -11
161745 -12  0.2  977 ~  CQ EA8TR IL18
162415  -7 -0.2 1113 ~  IZ8LKL ZD7MY R+00
163145 -10 -0.2 1484 ~  F8BBL ZD7MY -15
163515  -8 -0.2 1484 ~  IS0CDS ZD7MY 73
163545  -8 -0.2 1484 ~  ZD7MY QRT QRT
184300 -19  0.3 2403 ~  CQ KC4QX EL97

Addendum: 
1) Just after posting, I noticed that G0LUJ also noted the high MUF on 28 MHz on his blog post.