WSPR on 28 MHz - Sat 25th April 2020

Saturday 25th April 2020. There was a pretty good Sporadic-E opening on 28 MHz with very strong signals from around Europe.

Rather than just logging hundreds of signals on FT8, I had a listen to the WSPR frequency instead.

I listened at two different stages during the day and the WSPR results were quite different.

When the band was wide open to Spain and Portugal with very strong signals on FT8, I heard just two signals on WSPR i.e. there is a lack of WSPR activity across the south of Europe.

By contrast, when there was a strong opening to the Netherlands and Germany, I heard plenty of signals.

What I find really interesting about WSPR are the stations running less than one watt output power...

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km az # Spots
 2020-04-25 17:38 EA5CYA 28.126058 -19 -1 IM99 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 1488 340 2 
 2020-04-25 17:38 G6NHU 28.126070 -17 0 JO01ou 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 658 274 2 
 2020-04-25 17:36 CT1EBQ 28.126063 -22 0 IM58gr 0.1 EI7GL IO51tu 1462 3 3 
 2020-04-25 17:24 F5REF 28.126018 +6 -1 JN07 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 828 309 3 
 2020-04-25 17:20 DL6DAV 28.126130 -22 0 JO41ic 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 1183 281 3 
 2020-04-25 17:16 ON4LUK 28.126187 -21 0 JO11 0.05 EI7GL IO51tu 782 277 2 
 2020-04-25 17:12 ON7WP 28.126153 -12 0 JO21ic 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 909 280 2 
 2020-04-25 17:10 PA2LVD 28.125995 -18 0 JO21 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 919 278 4 
 2020-04-25 13:06 OZ2JBR 28.126079 -13 0 JO65di 5 EI7GL IO51tu 1412 263 1 
 2020-04-25 13:04 DC8FG 28.126085 -11 -4 JO44xq 0.2 EI7GL IO51tu 1255 263 1 
  2020-04-25 12:40 DC7JZB/B 28.126042 -15 -1 JO62qk 0.5 EI7GL IO51tu 1480 276 4 
 2020-04-25 12:40 PD0KT 28.126005 -6 0 JO33le 0.01 EI7GL IO51tu 1046 268 2 
 2020-04-25 12:40 PA0GAB 28.126110 -21 1 JO33ge 0.05 EI7GL IO51tu 1018 268 1 
 2020-04-25 12:32 PA0JED 28.126101 -8 0 JO31aw 0.1 EI7GL IO51tu 988 275 5 
  2020-04-25 12:30 PA9MD 28.126076 -26 3 JO21px 0.1 EI7GL IO51tu 936 275 1 
 2020-04-25 12:30 PA0HEJ 28.126094 -15 0 JO31ix 0.1 EI7GL IO51tu 1033 275 5 

It's amazing to hear signals from stations running 10 milliwatts and 50 milliwatts.

Beacons... The really good conditions also allowed a number of beacons to be logged...

EI7GL 28207.1 ON0RY/B 16:49 25 Apr IO51TUJO20CK Belgium
EI7GL 28255.8 C30P 16:04 25 Apr IO51TUJN02SM Andorra
EI7GL 28205.0 DL0IGI/B 16:01 25 Apr IO51TUJN57MT Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28298.0 SK7GH/B 14:00 25 Apr IO51TUJO77BF Sweden
EI7GL 28271.0 OZ7IGY/B 13:11 25 Apr IO51TUJO55WM Denmark
EI7GL 28279.0 DB0UM/B 12:51 25 Apr IO51TUJO73CE Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28277.3 DM0AAB/B 12:49 25 Apr IO51TUJO54GH Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28245.2 DB0TEN/B 12:48 25 Apr IO51TUJO42UV Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28188.0 OE3XAC/B 11:57 25 Apr IO51TUJN78SB Austria
EI7GL 28251.4 ED4YAK/B 10:59 25 Apr IO51TUIN80FK Spain
EI7GL 28218.0 IQ5MS/B 09:47 25 Apr IO51TUJN54AB Italy 
EI7GL 28173.1 IZ1EPM/B 09:44 25 Apr IO51TUJN35WD Italy
EI7GL 28226.0 ED1YCA/B 09:39 25 Apr IO51TUIN73AL Spain

The unusual ones were ON0RY/B and ED1YCA/B which are about 1,000kms from here and require short skip to be heard on Sporadic-E.

FT8... When I wasn't using the radio, I left it on the FT8 frequency on 28 MHz. As can be seen from the map, the opening around Europe was quite intensive.