Sat 29th May 2021: It looks as if there was a weak opening from Europe to Australia on the 50 MHz with a few weak FT8 signals making it through.
Txmtr Rcvr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC)
DF5VAE VK4HJ 6m FT8 15477 km 06:05:29
UT7UV VK4HJ 6m FT8 14545 km 04:18:44
SP3MM VK4CZ 6m FT8 15564 km 07:10:14
VK4CZ UT2XQ 6m FT8 14683 km 06:59:59
SP4K VK3OER 6m FT8 15383 km 05:17:41
It looks as if there was a successful FT8 contact between VK4CZ in Australia and SP3MM in Poland, a distance of about 15564kms. The signals seem to have been quiet weak and were in the range of -16dB to -20dB which is below what is audible to the human ear i.e. a cw contact would not have been possible.
As for the propagation mode, it seems likely it was multi-hop Sporadic-E with possibly eight hops required. I say 'likely' as I sometimes wonder what are the chances of getting eight Sp-E hops in a row at 50 MHz.
We still have all of June to go yet so there could be more openings on 50 MHz from Europe to Australia.
2 comments:
Hi John,
I think multihop sporadic-E is unlikely. I'm not active on 50MHz but most days FT8 is running on 28MHz. Mixed propagation modes are most likely involved. Before coming to Queensland I never realized how transequatiorial propagation is constant even at sunspot minimum. We can find 6000Km contacts with JA every day. In our mornings I often hear Central/North America when the TEP is midway over the Pacific Ocean. I assume TEP is involved.
Thanks for your blog.
73 Brian
Hi Brian, thanks for the comment.
There was a similar opening in July of 2020 and I thought TEP might have been part of it but a lot of guys thought it was multi-hop Sp-E all of the way.
https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2019/07/unusual-50-mhz-opening-from-australia.html
I'm not sure we can ever be 100% certain what it was.
John
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