Thursday 22nd July 2021: Openings on the FM band (88-108 MHz) between North America and Europe are very rare and it's always interesting to hear about these very high frequencies crossing the North Atlantic.
On the 22nd, Paul Logan in Lisnaskea in Co.Fermanagh in the north of Ireland managed to catch a short 5-minute opening to the state of Maine in the NE of the USA.
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UTC QRG ITU Station, location Details, remarks Distance km Received by/in kW ERP Pol
14:06 UTC 89.70 MHz USA WMED, Calais (ME) Weak. End of wx report. Start of "On point" show. Fits with online edition. Brief. 4294kms 30kW m
14:06 UTC 92.90 MHz USA WEZQ, Bangor (ME) Sports talk, same time as 88.5 4390kms 20kW m
14:05 UTC 88.50 MHz USA WHCF, Bangor (ME) Religious show, Scottish preacher // web 4353kms 35kW m
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As the log from the FMLIST website shows above, Paul managed to log three separate stations at the bottom of Band 2 with frequencies in the range of 88 to 93 MHz.
To put this opening in perspective, this was only the 9th trans-Atlantic Band 2 opening for Paul Logan in a period of about 20 years.
For the reception, Paul was using a ELAD FDM S2 SDR receiver with a Band 2 9-element Yagi 8m above ground level.
Propagation Mode: As can be seen from the log, the distances were in the region of 4300kms. It's likely that the mode of propagation was double hop Sporadic-E i.e. 2 x 2150km hops.
For more examples of long distance reception reports on Band 2, visit my 88-108 MHz page.
