AmateurRadio.com

It seems that my whining about the poor Es this season has paid off. This afternoon we had the best east-west opening of the season with strong signals from all U.S. mainland call districts. The opening lasted for several hours and into the early evening with many 1's, 2's and 3's worked as well as several VE3's, which is always a rare treat. During openings like this, I always monitor the rising Es muf with a separate R-7000 receiver, squelched on one of the normally quiet FM channels. At times the Es muf was well into the FM broadcast band but despite watching 144.200 and calling CQ regularly, there was no sign of 2m Es today.

Courtesy: DXMAPS.COM

Hopefully the good propagation will continue during the next few weeks and our somewhat disasterous season can yet be saved.

Courtesy: DXMAPS.COM

Having been on 6m now for over 40 years (yikes!), like most 6m operators I've come to expect a fairly good number of Es openings by the end of June. This summer's Es season has been beyond poor, with far too many days looking much like Saturday morning's 6m propagation map (above) from DX Sherlock.

So far, the only bright spot for me has been a very short twenty-minute opening to Argentina and a CW QSO with LU5FF on May 24 at around 1500 hours local time.



Most 6m ops feel that sunspot cycle peak years also produce poorer than normal Es activity so maybe this is all just normal...or perhaps our global climate shifts are having an effect on the triggering mechanisms for Sporadic-E, just 60 miles above our heads.

Real-time 6m propagation can be followed here; Region 2 for North America and Region 3 for Europe.

After so many summers on six, I personally believe that the best propagation usually happens during the first week of July, so there is still hope for a really terrific month ahead and still time for whoever controls the magic to yet redeem themselves.