The 18th of May turned out to be interesting, and reminds me why I’ve always found 144MHz to be so fascinating!

The day started with an early Es opening to Italy, resulting in the following QSOs:

18/05/2013 09:00 I2PY JN55NB 59 59 SSB ES 1609km
18/05/2013 09:01 IW4ARD JN64FD 59 59 SSB ES 1754km
18/05/2013 09:07 I2ARQ JN55NA 59 59 SSB ES 1612km
18/05/2013 09:19 IW2BNA JN45ON 59 59 SSB ES 1455km
18/05/2013 09:21 IZ4MAO JN54GQ 59 59 SSB ES 1597km
18/05/2013 09:23 IW2NNZ JN45SN 59 59 SSB ES 1476km
18/05/2013 09:27 I4TSB JN64DA 59 59 SSB ES 1752km
18/05/2013 09:30 IW4BET JN54PG 59 55 SSB ES 1672km

2m Es QSO Map 18/05/13

A bit later I was QRV for moonrise, and managed to work a new initial:

18/05/2013 13:43 JR3REX PM74LQ RO RO JT65 EME 9735km

After the Moon had risen too high for my fixed-elevation antenna, I tried a tropo test with Jerome, F8GGD, in IN95: Unfortunately this didn’t work, but as we were trying Dom, F6DRO, said he could hear me weakly. Dom and I then tried and we could both hear continuous signals right on the noise floor, in fact enough to complete a contact on CW with a bit of “brain averaging”. I was very surprised, because Dom is in JN03TJ and 1201km distant! It’s really too far for troposcatter, but I suspect there was some tropo enhancement (i.e. ducting) on the path.

Oh, and I also heard DK1FG’s (JN59op/1384km) complete QSO with M0BAA/P, which I suspect was via Es-enhanced meteor scatter, just to add another propagation mode into the mix 🙂