Wow, what a great 2 m ES opening today! Already when driving between two of our QRL locations around 8z this morning I had this gut feeling. Checked dxmaps.com around 8:30z and saw things evolving. Unfortunately I had to be back in the office for another meeting but when done around 10z and looking at the MUF map again I saw those big red colored squares all over the place! Luckily no other meetings scheduled for today so I rushed into the car to drive home and was QRV by 12:30 local time. And my first QSO was already a new one! 😎
Worked a number of Russian and Ukrainian stations. Had the feeling activity was not that high but that might have been due to the fact we were not optimally located, it was even better further south west. As you can see on the map (big thanks to Gabriel, EA6VQ, for his great service!) there were at least 3 different clusters of high MUF E-clouds. So it was not astounding that around 12z while 2m was still wide open into UA4 it also opened into south-west France. But only one station hrd/wrkd here (again much better about 100 km south). Although no additional QSOs in the log the band was still open until about 12:30z overhere, the usual UA4’s from LN29/LO20 were still pounding in but no fresh meat anymore … Speaking of UA4’s: RX4CQ provided a new square, too. Had tried with him on MS in the past without luck so even more happy to catch him on ES now. 🙂
Also worth mentioning is the QSO with UT3BW at under 1.000 km which is a sign for an extremely high MUF, must have been in the 170 MHz’s or so …
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 10:30 UA6LNS LNØ7KM # 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1980 10:37 UA4AQL LO2ØQB 599 599 2 m. CW ES 2161 10:38 RA4A LO2ØQC 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 2159 10:41 UA4ALU LN29LA 55 59 2 m. SSB ES 2178 10:54 UR5LX KO7ØWK 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1514 10:55 UR4LSK KO8ØCA 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1552 11:05 UT3BW KN29UA 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 925 11:09 RN3ZU KO7ØTA 59 59 2 m. FM ES 1514 11:11 UW5EDK KN78MH 59 59 2 m. FM ES 1555 11:13 R3WW KO81DF 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1514 11:14 RL3QDD KO91OQ 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1694 11:19 UA3QIN KO91NP 599 599 2 m. CW ES 1689 11:21 RX4CQ LO3ØLV # 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 2234 11:25 UR5GKD KN66RU 55 59 2 m. SSB ES 1538 11:30 UR3GS KN66QR 59 59 2 m. FM ES 1541 11:31 UR5GKD KN66RU 59 59 2 m. FM ES 1538 11:31 US1GCH KN66RU 59 59 2 m. FM ES 1538 11:33 UA4ALU LN29LA 599 599 2 m. CW ES 2178 11:35 URØGE KN66RT 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1541 11:38 UR3GS KN66QR 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1541 11:39 UR8GZ KN66RT 59 59 2 m. FM ES 1541 12:04 F4ARU JNØ3QL 55 55 2 m. SSB ES 1432 ------------------------------------------------------------------
After the band had closed here, meaning we were too close to the clouds then, F2CT worked far into Russia on double hop ES with distances > 3.800 km! I’m quite sure he opened a bottle afterwards … 😉
All in all 2 m was open for 4,5 hours continously! Glad I at least caught 2 hours of it. Doesn’t happen very often. And it really sounded like 20 m at times. 😎