I recently came across details of a remarkable 70 MHz contact that was made on the 18th of June 2019 between EA8DBM in the Canary Islands and UN7MBH in Kazakhstan. It's possible that someone hadn't noticed the date on the FT8 screen capture when posted online and thought it was from 2020 instead.
Despite the fact that it's over a year old, it was still an interesting contact as it was in the region of 6,112 kms. As you can see from the screenshot below, the contact was made via the FT8 digital mode.
While most Sporadic-E contacts on 70 MHz might be in the region of say 1500 to 2200 kms, the 6000 km plus distance for this contact suggests that it may have been triple hop Sporadic-E.
Triple hop Sporadic-E on 50 MHz is interesting but not that unusual. After all, most of the 6-metre contacts between Europe and the USA are triple hop or more.
However as the frequency get higher, a higher level of ionisation is required. At 70 MHz, single hop Sporadic-E is very common, double hop is a more unusual but triple hop is more exceptional.
I searched on the net for more information on this remarkable contact but there didn't seem to be anything about it. I thought I'd make a post about it so that at least a record of it now exists.
I know that there have been triple hop contacts from the north-west of Europe to the Arabian Peninsula but I don't think any of those exceed 6000 kms.
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