Sunday 24th October 2021: This was a pretty good day on the 28 MHz band with 681 stations in 51 DXCC countries heard on FT8. In terms of numbers, that's about the same as a very good day at the peak of the Sporadic-E season during the Summer.
In this case however, it's a mix a some Sporadic-E to Europe and some F2 propagation to the rest of the world.
As always, it's the East-West propagation that is interesting. What I noted were...
a) Five stations from Australia.
Txmtr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC)
VK6APK 10m FT8 15125 km 08:30:59
VK6IR 10m FT8 15097 km 08:58:44
VK6DW 10m FT8 15061 km 09:07:14
VK6OZ 10m FT8 15056 km 11:36:14
VK8NSB 10m FT8 14315 km 10:32:14
VK6APK 10m FT8 15125 km 08:30:59
VK6IR 10m FT8 15097 km 08:58:44
VK6DW 10m FT8 15061 km 09:07:14
VK6OZ 10m FT8 15056 km 11:36:14
VK8NSB 10m FT8 14315 km 10:32:14
b) RA9 stations from Asiatic Russia coming through. When I heard UA9/RA9 stations on 28 MHz then it's a good sign.
c) K7SP from Arizona.
d) Skip zones... If you look at the map, you'll notice a zone going through Bulgaria, Romania, the far west of Ukraine and European Russia. This is where the Sporadic-E stops (max distance) and the F2 propagation starts (min distance).
What's missing are stations from Japan and the west coast of the USA. As we get further up the solar cycle, those paths will be possible to stations with very modest antennas.
The solar flux was 93.
3 comments:
Hello John, I made QSO's with JA4FKX and JA5ARW that morning. So besides the good path to Australia there was a path to Japan as well from Europe. I had strong signals from the RSA late afternoon and ZD7BG who I worked on FT4 had a S8 on my S-meter. The strange thing is that over the day I heard only a few SSB stations on 10m. 73 and keep monitoring, Bas
Being 1000kms further east and using a beam probably makes a big difference.
It's good to see things on the way up.
I concur with Bas, very little USB activity these days and I think 50MHz is even worse. Anyway, if the link below works this is my previous 24 hour reception on 28MHz. The Log starts East in the morning through South at lunchtime then NW in the afternoon before going back SW in the evening.
Incidentally last week I had a JA on 12M at 0130UTC beaming SW, presumably long path.
https://ibb.co/19LPwx8
Paul G7PUV
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