Wednesday saw a massive sun eruption not expected (especially that strong) being so far down the solar cycle already. In fact it has been the strongest solar flare in Cycle 24! spaceweatherlive.com has an interesting article about it.
After hearing about it on Wednesday evening and knowing most of it would be earth directed it was clear there would be some radio Aurora around about 48 hours later. That’s the time it needs to travel from sun to earth to then hit our planet’s magnetic field (which is protecting us from the rays’s effects mostly) and produce Aurora. I took care to be able to get home from QRL today a little earlier than usual at the moment, i.e. not working 11-13 hours a day. When I saw the first Aurora spots appearing on the DXcluster I called it a day at QRL and went home to join the fun.
It’s been a great opening lasting about 6 hours in total overhere. I was able to do over 100 QSOs. 😎 Also worked a lot of southerly located stations which really needs a very big opening. Normally even with good Auroras you can work as far south as the JOx0 squares, sometimes down to JNx8 as well. But working as far south as Croatia, Austria, Hungary and even Italy is really rare. This time it even reached down to Serbia (KN04) and even Bulgaria (KN13), amazing! 😎 The reflection zone got that far south at the end (around 18z) that I was north of it (!) meaning I could not hear any signals anymore while UK stations did work down into Croatia and Italy at the same time! Peter, SM2CEW (KP15), did a number of Aurora forward scatter QSOs into the UK which is also very rare! It did not work further “south”, i.e. at Lasse, SM0KAK, around the Stockholm region …
These very southern stations were worked, most of them with me beaming around 80°:
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 14:30 LZ2FO KN13KX 52A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1204 14:34 9A1UN JN65VG 59A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 881 15:50 S51ZO JN86DR 55A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 733 15:52 IK3VZO JN55XA 55A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 922 15:54 YU1EV KNØ4CN 53A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1053 15:57 9A6DDA JN85OK 55A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 888 16:00 9A9C JN85LI 57A 57A 2 m. CW AUR 893 16:04 9A2AE JN86HF 59A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 793 16:10 S5ØC JN76JG 59A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 770 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course distances are not that big for the QSOs mentioned above, it’s more about their rare nature. You can do much bigger distances into west and east. But even there distances bigger than 1.400 km are something special not happening too often. Keep in mind I’m only running about 600 watts and a single 9 ele LFA Yagi! Of course running a kilowatt or more and a group of 4 antennas or more you can certainly do much better. 😉 I was very happy and excited being called by Serge, RD3FD. Not only was our QSO a great distance but also a new square, too, #556. And I was his only contact into Germany! 😎 Also the QSO with Andy, RV3IG, in LO17 was quite remarkable …
Here are the QSOs over 1.000 km distance:
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 13:22 GM3WOJ IO77WS 59A 59A 2 m. SSB AUR 1257 13:33 R3DX KO85OG 55A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 1505 14:01 RD3FD LOØ5UT 55A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1787 14:06 RK2P KO93AD 59A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 1581 14:07 RV3IG LO17FJ 55A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1834 14:09 R3IS KO76WU 59A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 1433 14:30 LZ2FO KN13KX 52A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1204 15:04 G4RRA IO8ØBS 59A 59A 2 m. CW AUR 1263 15:07 F8DBF IN78RI 56A 52A 2 m. CW AUR 1418 15:42 EW8W KO42TO 51A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1034 15:54 YU1EV KNØ4CN 53A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1053 17:34 G4KUX IO94BP 57A 55A 2 m. CW AUR 1063 17:55 RX1AS KO59XW 59A 57A 2 m. CW AUR 1314 ------------------------------------------------------------------
You can find my full log here. As you can see I concentrated on 2 m. There was simply nothing very interesting to be worked on 6 m and our 4 m special permit sorrily expired a week ago. 🙁 Also nicely visible: just a very small number of SSB contacts! With all the spread understanding voice reflected by Aurora is really difficult. I tried CQing myself on sideband a few times but mostly couldn’t make out the callers … CW rulez! 🙂