Tuesday the 24th of March 2020 was a really good day on
28 MHz with an extensive Sporadic-E opening on the band.
The FT8 signals heard on the band are shown above. In total, 764 stations and 39 countries were heard which was just like a day in June was like a day in the June at the peak of the Sporadic-E season.
As well as a large number of signals from Europe, Lebanon, Israel, Western Sahara, St. Helena Island in the S Atlantic, Columbia, Brazil and Argentina was also heard.
I also heard TT4AM in Chad on cw.
This is the map of European stations heard...
As you can see, there was quite a concentration of stations from Italy, Spain, Germany and France.
Some notable features of the maps are...
1)
Missing... Nothing heard from Norway, Sweden, Finland or the Baltic states.
2)
Short Skip... Quiet a few signals from Brittany which is about 600kms from me. This is normally in the Sp-E skip zone and is hard to hear.
3)
Numbers... The large number of stations heard was probably helped by the fact that countries like Spain, France and Italy are in lock down due to the Corronavirus epidemic. However, it was still exceptional for the end of March.
4)
Double-Hop... You can see from the map where my one-hop Sporadic-E limit of about 2,200 kms is. There is a sudden drop of of stations in Southern Italy and Eastern Poland. The signals from places like Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey were probably double hop.
5)
High MUF... It looks as if the 50 MHz band was open as well and they are report of Band 2 radio stations from Spain and France being heard in the northern part of Ireland. The maximum usable frequency reached at least 100 MHz.
Normally I just leave the radio monitoring the FT8 frequency and check the PC occasionally to see if anything was heard. As I could see the signals were reading 'S9' at times, I tuned around the band as well for beacons and this is what I heard...
EI7GL 28167.4 ZB2TEN/B 17:25 24 Mar IO51TUIM76HD Gibraltar
EI7GL 28251.4 ED4YAK/B 17:20 24 Mar IO51TUIN80FK Spain
EI7GL 28207.2 ON0RY/B 16:59 24 Mar IO51TUJO20CK Belgium
EI7GL 28188.0 OE3XAC/B 16:49 24 Mar IO51TUJN78SB Austria
EI7GL 28269.0 SV6DBG/B 16:41 24 Mar IO51TUKM09KQ Greece
EI7GL 28257.8 DK0TEN/B 16:37 24 Mar IO51TUJN47NT Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 282231.1 F5ZEH/B 16:35 24 Mar IO51TUIN88VA France
EI7GL 28227.4 IW3FZQ/B 16:32 24 Mar IO51TUJN55VF Italy
EI7GL 28205.0 DL0IGI/B 16:29 24 Mar IO51TUJN57MT Fed. Rep. of Germany
EI7GL 28194.0 IW4EIR/B 16:28 24 Mar IO51TUJN54AS Italy
F5ZEH/B in Brittany is an unusual one as it's normally in the skip zone and I think I have only heard it a few times.
SV6DBG/B in Greece was probably double hop Sporadic-E.
IW4EIR/B was a new one for me. According to QRZ, it's a 1.5-watt beacon. Looking at the DX-cluster, there are no spots for this beacon between May 2018 and December 2019 so I presume it was off air for 18 months.
I spent about two minutes listening around the SSB part of the band and there seemed to be plenty of activity although to be honest, I was bored after the two minutes.
On the CW portion of the band, I heard TZ4AM in Mali working a pile up split.
Overall, a really good day on the 10-metre band considering it was the end of March at the bottom of the sunspot cycle.
List of FT8 stations heard...
