Winter Sporadic-E opening on the FM band in the USA - 14th Jan 2025

While the summer Sporadic-E season from late April to early August is well known, there is also a much smaller Sporadic-E season during the mid-winter.

On the 14th of January 2025, there was one such opening in North America. This one was a bit unusual in that it happened during the hours of darkness and the maximum usable frequency (MUF) went as high as 107.7 MHz.

Mike Schaffer, KA3JAW writes... "There was a good Sporadic-E opening on the 88-108 MHz FM broadcast band on the 14th of January 2025.  There was USA Winter Season FM Es reported on three spotters, Wlogger, FMLIST, DXMAPS during the midnight hours up to the top of the band. 

Two events - the first occurred from 0506 - 0655 UTC from the Northeast to the upper Midwest. The second shorter event from 2313 - 2323 UTC was from the Northeast to the lower Midwest."

Looking through the logs, the minimum skip distance was 952kms while the longest was 2289kms, close to the maximum for one hop Sporadic-E.

FM radio stations in the Azores heard in Newfoundland - 14th May 2024

Now that we're well into the Summer Sporadic-E season, there have been plenty of reports of openings on the FM band going from 88 to 108 MHz. Most reports seem to be single hop Sporadic-E for now but this one caught my attention.

On the 14th of May 2024, Larry Horlicks (VO1FOG) recorded an opening from the Azore Islands to Newfoundland. As can be seen from the image above, the distances were in the region of 1894 to 2259 kms.

While the propagation mode was still one-hop Sporadic-E, any openings on the FM band across the North Atlantic are always of special interest. As we move into June and July, there should hopefully be some double hop Sporadic-E openings and reports of radio stations on the 88-108 MHz band being heard across the Atlantic.

Some examples of previous trans-Atlantic openings can be seen on my 88-108 MHz page.