Monday the 6th of May 2019 was in many ways similar to the previous day in that the 28 MHz band was quiet for most of the day and only really opened up in the late afternoon.
The main Sporadic-E opening started at about
15:30 UTC and what was unusual was that it didn't close until about
23:00 UTC.
The main opening was to the south towards Spain with most of the strong signals from there.
These are the FT8 signals heard on
Monday the 6th of May 2019...
Notes...
1) The band opened to South America again although I heard a lot less traffic than on the 5th of May.
2) I noticed that some of the stations in the UK had double hop Sp-E down to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. There were no signals here though.
3) This is the map of Europe in more detail...
It shows the areas where the main openings were... to Spain / Portugal and to N.Italy/S.Germany.
The yellow line shows my one hop Sporadic-E limit. I heard just three stations that were double hop.
Beacons...While FT8 hears signals that are buried in the noise, hearing the beacons on cw is another matter. If you start hearing there then you know conditions are reasonable.
These are the beacons heard and they more or less concur with the areas heard on FT8...
EI7GL 28188.0 OE3XAC/B 19:27 06 May IO51TUJN78SB Austria
EI7GL 28205.0 DL0IGI/B 19:25 06 May IO51TUJN57MT Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28265.1 DF0ANN/B 19:22 06 May IO51TUJN59PL Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28210.7 DB0FKS/B 18:51 06 May IO51TUJN49IT Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28207.1 ON0RY/B 18:44 06 May IO51TUJO20CK Belgium
EI7GL 28257.7 DK0TEN/B 18:41 06 May IO51TUJN47NT Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28255.8 C30P/B 17:52 06 May IO51TUJN02SM Andorra
EI7GL 28253.3 ED5YAU/B 15:53 06 May IO51TUIM98WN Spain
EI7GL 28251.1 ED4YAK/B 15:46 06 May IO51TUIN80FK Spain
EI7GL 28169.3 ZB2TEN/B 15:44 06 May IO51TUIM76HD Gibraltar
The ED4YAK/B beacon near Madrid is one of the most consistent here and I heard it near the start of the opening and it was there for a lot of the evening. I also heard it at 23:05 UTC which was just after midnight local Summer time.
The one of interest in there for me is ON0RY/B in Belgium. This is reasonably close at about 1000kms which shows that the skip distance is getting shorter.
Caribbean... The most interesting part of the opening was probably the opening to the Caribbean. North-South propagation is the norm on 28 MHz when the solar flux is low but it's when the signals start going East-West that it gets interesting.
These are the FT8 signals from that region with Venezuela, Guadaloupe, Puerto Rico and Haiti heard....
NP4TX 10m FT8 3888 miles 22:20:29
YV4DYJ 10m FT8 7056 km 22:00:00
HH2AA 10m FT8 6624 km 21:56:44
FG4ST 10m FT8 6105 km 20:40:14
YV5MBI 10m FT8 7023 km 20:39:29
North-South Divide... It was interesting to see how the signals from HH2AA in Haiti seemed to have a northerly cut off. None of the stations in the north of the UK seemed to hear him.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMig8m-xm902PDR1H2_zfZ7o9L27eTnuLaqyto35C7NigxtNcYnE-x42dxk9Wuv2ntH4dembzxVk6qh0spqVCVUU8oCnua0Hj8B2CNm8p1uP0YhOG7i_GDXI43-8FoyxvNBA9lRmYpCY/s1600/06-may-2019-d.jpg) |
Stations hearing HH2AA on FT8 on 28 MHz - 6th May 2019 |
As for the mode of propagation to the Caribbean? One hop Sporadic-E to the west and then F2? Multi hop Sporadic-E?
I suspect Sp-E and then F2 but that's the thing about 28 MHz, there are times when you can't be certain.
The Solar Flux was down at 72 which is very low.
In total, I uploaded 304 FT8 reports from 188 stations in 30 countries to the PSK Reporter website.
These are the stations heard (2000kms plus in bold)...