17,000km+ opening on the 50 MHz band from the UK to Sydney, Australia - 27th Oct 2024

There's an expression in the English language called 'CAN'T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES'. Sometimes DX on the VHF bands can be like this, you can see a flood of reports and contacts on a particular band during an opening but the exceptional DX reports often get missed.

There have been many reports of openings in the last week from Australia to Europe but a lot of these are from the south of Europe and to places like Western Australia (VK6). There's a huge difference between say an opening on 6m from Perth to Athens compared to say an opening from the UK to New South Wales.

Conditions on Sunday the 27th of October 2024 were really good on the 50 MHz band and Stewart, G0LGS in the west of England reports working VK2IR in Sydney, Australia... a distance just under 17,120kms.

Stewart sends on the following report... "After being on six (on/off) since 1985 I was lucky to get one of those magic moments on Six just after 07:00 on Sunday 27th October 2024

I was up early and had the beam looking East for a while on 6m FT8 (50.313) when at 07:07:15 I saw VK2IR calling an OZ station (Denmark).

I immediately stated calling CQ and after 4 calls at 07:09:15 UTC. VK2IR called me giving me -17. Report, my report back was R-17 and at that point the conditions faded a little (I could see faint trace in waterfall but no decodes) and I was not sure if we would complete however at 07:11:45. I finally received RR73 for my first ever 6m contact with VK at 17,089km.

This QSO was later confirmed on LoTW

Paul G4RRA saw things a little better than I did and during that period when VK2IR also worked PA3GCV and then just after that PA0O and PC5C as can be seen from Paul's Screenshot.

I am told that this might be the best distance Terrestrial DX on 6m from the UK so far this season.

On Monday some UK and EU stations managed to make SSB QSOs with VK6 and on Tuesday some had SSB QSO's with DU6/PE1NSQ and FT8 with both DU6/PE1NSQ and 4S7AB and others, but I missed out on those.

Currently (Weds 0820) VK's are getting good propagation to East EU and Scandinavia."

G0LGS was using an ICOM IC-7300 with an Acom 1000 Linear (set to about 700W) with a 4 Ele LFA at 7m above ground level.

Analysis... As we reach the peak of the current sunspot cycle, conditions are really getting good on the 50 MHz band. Unlike previous solar peaks when the dominant modes were SSB and CW, there are now huge numbers of stations using weak signal modes like FT8 which allows reception of very weak signals buried in the noise. It's probably fair to say that openings and contacts are being made now that would have gone unnoticed in the past.

On the 27th of October, the solar flux was at 246 and the sunspot number was 198. The propagation mode was via the F2 layer of the ionosphere.

Over the next few months, we're likely to see more remarkable paths appearing on the 50 MHz band and now is the time to be active on the band. If the 6m band can open from the NW of Europe to the SE of Australia then there should be plenty of more opportunities.

Link... See my 50 MHz page for more reports of other long distance openings on the 6m band.