Propagation surprises

On the Bands
1

Just tuned into 14320 at mid day here in SW UK

Can hear chasers chasing Andrew on G/NP-028 as normal no hearing the activator due to fact he’s only 420Km from here northwards of my location. and sitting here hoping he go to 40m WHEN;-

All of sudden his signal climbed to 5/9 came out of the blue :open_mouth:
Made good contact and said hi to mike too YYY

Signal dropped off and gone

OH wow
The impossible just happened :slight_smile:
Love it when propagation laws are broken as we understand them

have been hearing a few Mid uk stations working Sota’s on 20m today but not like that :heart_eyes:

An astounded M3FEH Karl

1 Like
2

Now he has, did you manage a second band? Nothing coming in here inside this Faraday cage!

73, Gerald G4OIG

EDIT - bizarre, nothing from Andrew, but David G3RDQ on WB-022 is blowing my cans off.

3

Sporadic E probably.

4

probably

Just worked 2E0YYY/p on same summit same freq and etc

12:40hrs utc

brilliant

karl

5

Same situation here in YO last weekend: worked YO9RIJ/P on 20m in SOTA with 5/9, under 500km between us. Hearing other YO stations booming. See the video about this sporadic-E session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa-TxDkVv4Y

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6

We often hear of Sporadic E on 10m & 6m, but of late it has also been present (from what I have heard) as low in frequency as 20m.

I think the periods of Sporadic E that can be used on 20m are shorter than what we are used to on 10m.

The more we go into a sunspot minimum, the more important predicting Sporadic E will become. In this case it brings shorter distance communications on 20m, which - in this DX-prone hobby - would seem to be negaitive but if nothing is happening on 40m, it’ll be good to have the contacts on 20m via sporadic E instead.

For me, from where I am situated in Central Europe more short range 20m contacts would be very welcome as normally anything under about 500 miles from here, I simply cannot hear on 20m - and that’s some very SOTA summit intensive areas!

Ed.:slight_smile:

7

I’d have thought that, while Es is most often noticed because of its effect at the shorter wavelengths (because they get F-layer propagation rather less often), it’s likely to have an effect over most of the HF bands, but because the lower ones are also more likely to get propagation via the F layer it’s less obvious when Es is playing a part unless the skip’s exceptionally short. If I’m remembering correctly, one of the things that came out of the RSGB 5MHz experiment was that Es was a significant contributor to propagation on that band.

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8

That,s interesting.

Lets see if it comes up during summer months when the years sun cycle is at its lowest and the F2 is dipping below 14mhz in next couple of years.

karl