With the Azores high pressure system (finally!) building, it wasn’t a complete surprise to get a little tropo to the south this morning: This had also been implied by the Hepburn and F5LEN forecasts (note, links will show current forecasts, not necessarily that of 24th June 2013).
A quick check showed ED1ZAG/B (IN53re, 973km) to be a solid 559. I could hear another beacon slightly off frequency, keying a little faster, and this turned out to be CS3BTM/B (IM12or, 2246km) on Madeira Island, also a good signal.
I made a short recording, starting in an SSB bandwidth with both beacons (ED1ZAG is the higher-pitched signal), and then switching to a 500Hz and finally a 100Hz CW filter with just CS3BTM:
This morning, CS3BTM’s keying frequency was exactly 966Hz lower than ED1ZAG’s. I reckon ED1ZAG’s carrier was very close to 144.403MHz, which would put CS3BTM very close to 144.402MHz. I think both beacons do drift a little, but it’s a useful reference.
A little later, I had a nice SSB contact with Agustin, EA1YV, at his home qth (IN52oc, 1094km) but that’s it as far as humans go, so far!
UPDATE:
Although conditions seemed to have gone down by 09:30z (CS3BTM had faded completely), I tried a test with Domingo, EA8TJ (IL18rj, 2707km) on JT65A, with the following result:
094800 3 -24 -0.7 -242 3 # EI3KD EA8TJ IL18 OOO 0 10
095000 10 -23 -238 2 RRR
095200 5 -28 -241 3 73
So thanks to Domingo for our first QSO of 2013!