Opening from Guam to Ireland on the 50 MHz band - 5th Nov 2024

Tuesday 5th Nov 2024 - I had a quick listen to the FT8 frequency of 50.313 MHz today and almost straight away, I got FT8 decodes from India and Sri Lanka. It was obvious that there was some really good F2 propagation on the band.

I checked the PSKReporter website later to see if there were any good DX paths. I was interested to see that there was a path open from KG6DX on the island of Guam in the Pacific to Ireland & the UK.

Sometimes, it's not the distance that matters but how far north or south the path goes.

In this case, did the 50 MHz signals really go direct and pass that far north over Russia? Or was the path skewed with the signals following a path further south?

The solar flux today was 246 with a smoothed sunspot number of 191.

Here are some of the stations that had a path open to Guam (12,000kms +)

 Txmtr Rcvr Band Mode Distance Time (UTC) SNR

CT1EEB KG6DX 6m FT8 13398 km 11:20:13 -15
KG6DX CT1EEB 6m FT8 13398 km 11:18:59 -15
CT7BIZ KG6DX 6m FT8 13360 km 11:25:43 -17
KG6DX EA5K 6m FT8 13311 km 11:18:59 -18
F4BKV KG6DX 6m FT8 12588 km 11:28:13 -18
F8BON KG6DX 6m FT8 12540 km 11:35:43 -15
F8DBF KG6DX 6m FT8 12494 km 11:20:13 -7
KG6DX F6HRP 6m FT8 12429 km 11:18:59 -12
G7RAU KG6DX 6m FT8 12377 km 11:39:43 -13
KG6DX G7RAU 6m FT8 12377 km 11:18:57 -1
G8BCG KG6DX 6m FT8 12309 km 11:35:43 -16
EI7BA KG6DX 6m FT8 12305 km 11:21:13 -16
EI3EBB KG6DX 6m FT8 12290 km 11:23:43 -11
KG6DX GE1SDX 6m FT8 12267 km 11:18:59 -11
KG6DX G0KDY 6m FT8 12260 km 11:18:59 -15
KG6DX G0ABI 6m FT8 12243 km 11:19:29 -7
G0GGG KG6DX 6m FT8 12150 km 11:24:43 -18
GW7SMV KG6DX 6m FT8 12147 km 11:29:13 -10
KG6DX GW7SMV 6m FT8 12147 km 11:19:56 -11
KG6DX G0KTN 6m FT8 12141 km 11:26:00 -9
F6GCP KG6DX 6m FT8 12140 km 11:18:43 -17
G4CCZ KG6DX 6m FT8 12068 km 11:21:13 -16
KG6DX GW0WZL 6m FT8 12052 km 11:18:57 -6
F5OHS KG6DX 6m FT8 12027 km 11:30:43 -16
G0MTN KG6DX 6m FT8 12019 km 11:28:13 -10
KG6DX GW8ASD 6m FT8 12005 km 11:18:56 -10
GW8ASD KG6DX 6m FT8 12005 km 11:17:13 -14

15,000km opening on 50 MHz between the Canary Islands & Guam in the Pacific - 3rd June 2021

Thursday 3rd June 2021: Another day, another 15,000km opening on the 50 MHz band.... well almost. This time the longest opening seen on the PSK Reporter website was the 14,966km path between KG6DX on the island of Guam in the Pacific and EA8DBM on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

EA8/DF4UE on the neighbouring island of Lanzarote was just 150kms behind.

I checked the PSK Reporter site and there were paths open for both to multiple stations in Japan as well. IF the signals took the direct path then they crossed over the north of Russia.

50 MHz opening between Guam and Europe - 1st June 2021

Tuesday 1st June 2021: Over the last week or more, there have been openings from Europe to Japan on 50 MHz with distances in the region of 9,000kms. There was an interesting opening on the 1st of June however from Europe to the island of Guam in the Pacific.

The map above from the PSK Reporter website shows the paths that were open for KG6DX on Guam with maximum distances in the region of 12,000kms.

From a European perspective, a contact with a station out in the Pacific would be considered really good for say down on the HF bands but it's pretty amazing for 50 MHz, a VHF band.

When I checked the PSK Reporter website, I had a quick look at the last FT8 signal reports for the stations in Europe and they were generally down in the -10 to -20dB region. It looks as if maybe one or two might have possibly made a very weak CW contact while SSB would have been impossible. 

That assumption is based on the available data which is limited but it does suggest that the opening was marginal.

The opening to Europe seems to have been from roughly 05:40 to 07:00 UTC.

Propagation Mode: The interesting thing about this 12,000km opening is that because everything is north of the equator, we can rule out TEP (Trans-Equatorial Propagation). If it was multi-hop Sporadic-E then it may have been 6 hops or so. 

For something so 'sporadic', these multi-hop openings seem to be happening a lot.

The paths from stations in Europe to Guam are shown below...