Weak opening on 28 MHz - Sat 18th April 2020

Saturday 18th April 2020. The 28 MHz band was almost identical to yesterday except just weaker.

Again, there was a Sporadic-E opening to Spain and Portugal but the FT8 signals were pretty weak.

Just one station from Brazil made it through.

There was a modest opening to EA8 (Canary Islands) around 21:00 UTC which was about 1h 20m after sunset.

What's unusual about the Canary Islands is that it is about 2,700 kms from here, well in excess of a single hop Sporadic-E. This suggest some sort of multi-hop Sp-E path.

I also noted that one of the EA8 stations was working Australia...

205115 -19  0.0  652 ~  VK4CZ EA8AXT RR73

Stations heard over 2,500 kms...
Txmtr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC)
PP5JR 10m FT8 9663 km 15:24:44
EA8AUW 10m FT8 2705 km 20:47:29
EA8EK 10m FT8 2696 km 20:54:29
EA8DIB 10m FT8 2685 km 21:03:44
EA8CYU 10m FT8 2679 km 20:57:14