Luckily Corpus Christi is a local holiday overhere so I had the day off. 😎 Waking up at 5:30z I was not sure if I should get up or turn around for some more sleep. Seems it was a good decision to get up … First there was a very early ES opening on 144 MHz. Although it lasted only about 2 minutes in JO73 it was good enough for a nice QSO. 😉 Later this morning we had some great double-hop Sporadic-E on 50 MHz to the east allowing me to work MN52 & MN62 for two new squares, now 640 in total on 6 m. 🙂
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 06:52 RA6C KN94GT 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1990 09:45 EX8M MN62WT 599 599 6 m. CW 4446 10:04 UN6T MN52QV 599 599 6 m. CW 4276 10:07 EX9T MN82SD 599 599 6 m. CW 4731 10:15 UK8OM MN51UA 599 599 6 m. CW 4423 10:16 EA8DBM IL18OH 59 59 6 m. SSB 3747 ------------------------------------------------------------------
After that the MUF went down quickly but still 6 m was open all day long. I didn’t work anything else, was doing some QRL things meanwhile. Late afternoon 4 m started filling up with strong OIRT signals so I kept the beam dir East and threw an occasional CQ call on 2 m every now and then. At 16:33z Artur, UR3EE, answered my CQ starting another 1 hour ES opening on 144 MHz. 😎
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:33 UR3EE KN88DC 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1648 16:46 UR3VKE KN69OA 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1400 16:47 UR5VFJ KN69OA 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1400 16:56 UA6LJV KN97LE 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1872 16:56 RK6MF KN97RC 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1909 16:58 UR5EDN KN78SH 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1588 17:03 UZ2HZ KN69RA 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1416 17:12 UC7RAA KN64SO 59 59 2 m. SSB ES 1696 18:27 FM5WD FK94MP 559 599 6 m. CW 7721 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Signals were strong but never lasting very long, so pretty much all in & out after a few minutes. Nevertheless great fun! Then working the first Caribbean opening this year on 6 m via triple-hop ES later on was a nice end to a great DX day on VHF. 😎
UR3EE/KN88 booming in via Sporadic-E on 2 m (cut out white noise in-between):