Opening to Antarctica on 28 MHz - 27th Oct 2021

Wednesday 27th October 2021: For a change, I decided to monitor the 28 MHz band for WSPR signals even though I knew the level of activity would be dramatically lower than FT8.

FT8 is a really good mode for monitoring band conditions and seeing what part of the world the 28 MHz band is open to. The problem for me is that when things start getting too easy and every days looks the same then I get bored.

The same happens in April of every year. I start off looking for the start of the Sporadic-E season with FT8 and seeing how it progresses. Once the season gets underway and there are hundreds of stations heard on FT8, I get bored and move to WSPR.

On the 28th of October, I heard just 28 stations on WSPR as compared to the usual several hundred on FT8. Despite the low number, it was enough to make it interesting.

The longest reception reports are shown below but it was nice to see VK2DVM near Sydney and the German Antarctic station DP0GVN make it through.

 UTC (y-m-d) TX txGrid RX rxGrid MHz W SNR km 

2021-10-27 08:36 VK2DVM QF56di EI7GL IO51tu 28.126094 10 -24 17364 
2021-10-27 12:48 DP0GVN IB59ui EI7GL IO51tu 28.126032 5 -26 13621 
2021-10-27 09:00 HS0AJ OK03ft EI7GL IO51tu 28.126075 1 -26 10045 
2021-10-27 10:18 4Z4SI KM72 EI7GL IO51tu 28.126165 0.2 -23 4086 
2021-10-27 11:58 5T5PA IL10 EI7GL IO51tu 28.126181 0.2 -25 3569 
2021-10-27 08:48 TA4/G8SCU KM56vo EI7GL IO51tu 28.126034 5 -22 3561 

WSPR is far from perfect though. I heard nothing from North or South America and this was more due to a lack of stations rather than a lack of propagation.

Most of the WSPR signals heard were due to a Sporadic-E opening to Europe.

The solar flux was up to 111.