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...
