I’ve been active on the VHF bands for almost 30 years now and certainly experienced one or another great VHF-DX day. But what we experienced today certainly deserves the definition as “Best VHF-DX day ever”! The 6, 4 & 2 m bands were virtually open all day long! While it happens every now and then on 6 m it is an absolute exception to see 144 MHz open almost continously between 9 and 24 o’clock UTC! For my German readers Bernd, DF2ZC, wrote quite a nice summary for the FUNKAMATEUR news pages.
I’m really glad I decided to go the 400+ km from Hamburg to Schwedt on Thursday evening after QRL already. Spent the night at my mom’s, went shopping for the weekend (groceries for the WPX-CW contest) Friday in the late morning and then went the 20 km to our station out of town to prepare for the weekend, i.e. install a separate PC for the Flexradio, a.s.o.
4 m opened nicely into Spain up here just when I was done. I had seen the 2 m ES openings around Europe, of course, so was monitoring 144.174 FT8 as well as 144.300 SSB in parallel. While the main direction was to the South-West, i.e. Iberia, 4 m opened occasionally into other directions, too. EA3AGB was a new square while E76BV and ZA/IW2JOP even provided two new countries! 😎 The band stayed open all day long. I’m justing forcing myself to go to bed now (23z = 1 o’clock local time!) and there are still signals on the band! Simply amazing …
2 m opened around 14z up here. Plenty of activity from Spain and particularly pleasing lots of SSB activity, too! With such a big opening it’s just much more efficient on SSB. I called CQ myself several times when running out of stations to work and really enjoyed the small pileups. 😎 Of course FT8 makes sense when signals are weak, i.e. you’re out of reflection focus or working double hop. I did so every now and then hoping I would catch one of the two 7X stations from Algeria for a new country. Unfortunately never heard them but instead I caught CN8LI from IM63nx – wow! An amazing 2.706 km and probably a double hop QSO looking at the map above. Distance is much too far for one single hop and there were no tropo enhancements along the path but ES clouds quite favourable for a double reflection.
While monitoring FT8 I was secretly hoping to maybe catch D4VHF, too. Yes, that’s the Cape Verde Islands deep in the Atlantic Ocean, 5.300 km away! Oh well, good ol’ BQA is going crazy now, you might think. But hey, there was double hop, best ES conditions ever, and D4VHF already working into Southern and Western Europe! So clouds just needed to be aligned favourably and we would have a chance! And indeed, he was worked in South-DL and copied in Poland not too far from here! Unfortunately nothing overhere but it was only just after the opening I got to notice he was not on .174 but on another frequency aligned in the ON4KST chat trying with the big guns from Europe. Oh well, I was not logged in so couldn’t know, I would sure have monitored for such a once in a lifetime chance! But anyway, still the best ES opening ever! 4 hours on 2 m continously up here, then again for a few minutes half an hour later. Imagine to have such an opening during July contest! 😎
Now what about 6 m? To be honest I completely ignored it. Uwe, DL3BQA, was quite active from our station. Lots of double hop DX there, too. Lots of new squares possibilities, but I kept concentrating on 4 & 2 m. It was only when I saw good friend Steve, PJ4DX, spotted on 6 m SSB that I switched over and indeed, could copy him clearly with 5/3. Unfortunately I couldn’t raise him with 100 watts. I had already rebuilt my station for the contest so no amp capable of 6 m available without too much hassle. So went over to the other shack and started Uwe’s (who had left earlier) TRX and PA again but until the amp had warmed Steve’s signal had vanished. What a pity! Kept the gear running but decided half an hour later to switch it all off as I was still busy on 4 m. Well, VO1FOG was CQing on 50.110 SSB with a great signal and of course I couldn’t resist to give him a call. So I did one QSO on 6 m, too. 😉
To sum it up: Besides the new ones already mentioned above I even worked five new squares on 2 m: IN81, IM97, IM63, IM68, IN92 (#592). Great distances worked. Great experience I’ll surely remember for the rest of my life (and I think many others, too).
Here’s the list of worked stations sorted by band:
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 21:17 VO1FOG GN37IO 59 56 6 m. SSB ES 4643 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 12:57 EA5FQS IM99TL -05 -18 4 m. FT8 ES 1883 12:59 EA3HUI JNØ1MM -07 -09 4 m. FT8 ES 1627 13:48 EA2CCG IN92AO +07 -06 4 m. FT8 ES 1677 13:54 EA4ESM IN8ØDK -09 -16 4 m. FT8 ES 1956 13:56 EA3GP JNØ1SF +06 -04 4 m. FT8 ES 1632 13:58 EA3WD JNØ1XK -06 -23 4 m. FT8 ES 1595 14:03 EC5W IM98QG 59 59 4 m. FT8 ES 2010 14:54 EA1W IN73EM 55 53 4 m. SSB ES 1807 16:51 ZA/IW2JOP KMØ9AU +12 +02 4 m. FT8 ES 1547 17:14 GJ6WRI IN89VF +03 -05 4 m. FT8 ES 1222 17:38 E76BV JN83VG -04 -03 4 m. FT8 ES 1133 17:55 EB3JT JNØ1UI -24 -20 4 m. FT8 ES 1613 18:07 EA5TT IM99SL 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1887 19:15 CT1EEB IN5ØQR 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 2201 20:58 EA6SX JM19IK +12 +04 4 m. FT8 ES 1760 21:35 EA1GCN IN73DN 55 55 4 m. SSB ES 1809 21:36 EA1W IN73EM 55 55 4 m. SSB ES 1807 21:57 EA3AGB JNØØGQ +06 -14 4 m. FT8 ES 1728 21:59 EA5WO IM99SK +05 -08 4 m. FT8 ES 1891 22:07 EA2BFM IN83MG -08 -18 4 m. FT8 ES 1675 22:21 CT1BXT IM59PF 55 52 4 m. SSB ES 2330 22:25 EC1AJL IN73CI 59 59 4 m. SSB ES 1829 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 14:06 EA7KZ IM87CS -03 +03 2 m. FT8 ES 2202 14:07 EA1BFZ IN81SS 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1774 14:08 EA4CZV IN8ØDL 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1952 14:08 EA3DHR/1 IN81JS 51 59 2 m. SSB ES 1814 14:09 EA1BFZ IN81SS 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1774 14:13 EA7BHO IM87DD +08 -02 2 m. FT8 ES 2256 14:30 EA5IEA IM97JV +07 +16 2 m. FT8 ES 2071 14:35 EA5AJX IM98KU 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1976 14:37 EC5W IM98QG 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 2010 14:55 EA5IEA IM97JV -05 -09 2 m. FT8 ES 2071 14:59 EA5IDZ IM97JW +04 -01 2 m. FT8 ES 2067 15:03 EA5WU IM99WU +12 -07 2 m. FT8 ES 1836 15:03 EA3EVL JNØØHR 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1720 15:07 EA3ABK JNØ1OK 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1627 15:08 EA3AGB JNØØGQ 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1728 15:09 EA5EF IM99SM 55 55 2 m. SSB ES 1883 15:12 EA3GPK JNØ1PD 55 59 2 m. SSB ES 1651 15:16 EA7HLB IM76OP -16 -12 2 m. FT8 ES 2355 15:19 EB5GC IM97JX -01 +05 2 m. FT8 ES 2063 15:31 EA7KI IM77OV +06 -12 2 m. FT8 ES 2239 15:35 EA5DIT IM99CD 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1979 15:43 CN8LI IM63NX +04 -07 2 m. FT8 ES 2706 15:59 ISØANY JN4ØGR 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1449 16:01 EA6AAU JM19JK 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1757 16:02 EA6SX JM19IK 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1760 16:07 EA5IPM IM98QG 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 2010 16:14 EB5BQC IM98OL -22 -04 2 m. FT8 ES 1997 16:23 EA5EY IM98OL 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1997 16:24 EA5DF IM99RM 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1886 16:27 EA3KE JNØØIR 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1716 16:29 EA3CAZ JNØ1SE 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1636 16:33 EA3NG JNØ1OC -05 -06 2 m. FT8 ES 1659 16:36 EA5W IM97KX -04 -12 2 m. FT8 ES 2060 16:40 EA5NB IM99TL +02 +02 2 m. FT8 ES 1883 16:51 EB5HRX IM99TL 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1883 17:13 EA4C IM68MU -04 -19 2 m. FT8 ES 2266 17:16 EC1KR IN7ØOQ 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1991 17:17 EA3DHR/1 IN81JS 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1814 17:18 F2CT IN93GJ 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1583 17:21 EA1BYA IN7ØWW 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1934 17:23 EA4BPO IN8ØEJ 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1955 17:26 EA2BD IN92ET 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1641 17:31 EA2LU IN92ET 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1641 17:31 EA4LO IN8ØJM 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1923 17:32 EA4BU IN8ØCF 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1978 17:32 EA4BFK IN8ØAM 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1961 17:33 EA4BVW IN7ØXF 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1991 17:34 EA4JJ IN8ØAK 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1969 17:36 EA4EWJ IN8ØBM 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1957 17:37 EA4ESH IN8ØSG 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1907 17:41 EA4BX IN8ØHI 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1946 17:42 EA4GAX IN8ØCP 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1942 18:20 EB1DJ IN52MO +02 +10 2 m. FT8 ES 2074 ------------------------------------------------------------------