Hints of Sporadic E to come
With a couple of brighter days earlier this week and milder temperatures, perhaps it is starting to feel like Spring. Did I mention how much I hate the dark, cold days of Winter?!
Driving home on Monday night from the gym, I switched on the FT8900 and it came to rest on 29.600FM. There, were two huge signals; two Swedish stations talking to each other in a local QSO. Signals were clearly very solid. I wasn’t surprised to discover that there had been a few 50MHz ES contacts on Monday evening.
This lunchtime, I was listening around on 28MHz from the mobile and was pleased to hear the band open into Russia and I had a nice contact into the Moscow area.
So it feels like the first few Es openings are starting to take place on HF at least.
I am contemplating running 50MHz WSPR this season when I am not able to be in the shack and see how far that goes.
The 10M band was open to midwest and East coast today with nice openings. No DX at all, but had a great 2 hour QSO with N8EHP up in Michigan, and had to end the QSO only to make a run to the grocery store. Signals were holding real nicely with no fading and strong. Dont usually get up into the voice portion of 10M being a CW op, but I sure am glad I did today.