I spent most of the afternoon and early evening hours during the “St Patrick’s Day” aurora on 144MHz but when that started to fade I thought I’d follow the aurora westwards, listening on 50MHz where I had already heard a few very strongly auroral GMs, peaking at an azimuth of around 320/330˚.
At 21:02z I heard a weak and different-sounding signal, certainly auroral but more “Tone 5” than “Tone A”. After peaking the signal at an antenna azimuth of approximately 295˚, it turned out to be K2PLF in FM19 at a distance of 5272km! Unfortunately my 100 Watts wasn’t enough to be heard by him but it was the start of a fascinating couple of hours, listening to many weak signals popping up as stations in the USA and Canada called and worked each other.