May's bountiful gifts continue.

No, not Theresa, I mean the month of May.

I have been musing lately over the early arrival of various forms of multi-hop Es.

Three days ago I asked this question in an email:-

That is another day in May for transatlantic propagation, when in every other year apart from this one it started in early June. Will the same thing happen with the Japanese paths, which so far only occur for me in July?

And today guess what? A 6m opening to Japan.

The event kicked off with me working RO1M, 1956km away in KO59. Now that some more Russian stations are operating on 50MHz they do provide a pointer to when the band is open further East. They produce a lot of new squares too. Then I started hearing JA.

DX Maps on 50MHz at 08:27 on 29 May 2024.

This map looks pretty good but as usual these openings are often scrappy. I worked two stations JR1LZK and JA7QVI. Best DX 9164km. I also had another possible QSO which was a bit doubtful and I await confirmation. I am not complaining about working two, but I did hear a lot more.

JA on 6m in May is certainly an unusual event at GM4FVM. In fact, JA at 6m at any time is an unusual event GM4FVM.

Perhaps even more surprising was that several stations in GM were hearing a VK station later. Indeed a number of stations in these islands worked into VK. I did not even hear that station. Not that I am bitter about it of course.

Grrr.

There was a general Es opening and I was particularly busy on 70MHz:-

70MHz contacts at GM4FVM on 29 May 2024

Click image to enlarge if needed.

12 contacts on 4m in a morning is not at all shabby. Of course the best DX was to UN7MBH in LO51. That was my best DX on 70MHz so far this year at 3480km and my first contact into Asia on 4m in 2024.

The opening extended to 144MHz, though I did not manage to work any DX. I heard stations from Sweden and Kaliningrad, but neither of these produced a contact. I was heard in the Baltic and as far away as 2450km into Russia, but sadly nothing resulted. 

As I write this, the opening is still going on at 14:46. Although it has lost that initial power, it is producing good DX on 4m and 6m. Usually the double peak nature of Es means that morning openings rarely last into the afternoon, and afternoon ones rarely start in the morning. If both periods are involved the two openings are usually in different directions.

So there are you. Quite a morning. JAs on 6m in May, VK heard by almost everybody (not me), good opening on 4m and I was widely heard on 2m.

Whatever next.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Es underway and Transatlantic propagation sweeps South.

For this posting I am going back to consider my QSOs over the past week. The week before I was sailing down the Rhine, and the photo shows myself and Mrs FVM enjoying Strasbourg in a typical pose of our various outings.

FVM and Mrs FVM enjoying the Strasbourg streetscene.

We are back now and that week away has allowed the Es season to really get underway.

After a slow start, 70MHz has at last picked up.

70MHz contacts at GM4FVM from 21 to 28 May 2024.

Why do I spend my time on 4m when 6m was absolutely buzzing? Well, 4m is harder to do. The contacts require more work, you need to try to follow the propagation. A lot of the time you call and hear nobody. Who said amateur radio should be easy? Anyway, by the leisurely standards of 4m, 13 QSOs in 12 squares and seven countries is pretty racy. Best DX was SQ8AQX in KO00 at 1644km which is pretty good I think.

On 6m during the same period I worked 49 stations in 43 squares representing 21 countries. So more than three times the number of QSOs and three times the number of countries on 6m compared with 4m. Every QSO is interesting, otherwise neither the other station nor me would bother. However, for hair-shirt types like me there has to be more than churning them out.

If we look instead at 6m QSOs over 2250km we begin to see some more details. First of all, there are some. It is still only May and early in the season. In this category (6m over 2250km) I had five contacts.

50MHz contacts over 2250km at GM4FVM from 21 to 28 May 2024.

The reason why I chose the lower limit of 2250km is that the generally accepted limit for single hop Es is 2000km. I have had a few at 2100, so 2250 seemed like a safe bet. Beyond 2250km any Es is likely to be double hop propagation. So I was a bit surprised to see two contacts into Ukraine turning up on this map at 2264 and 2377km.

Anyway, the other three were KP4EIT (FK68 6752km), LU2GPB (GG03 10542km) and CE3CX (FF46, 11866km). The first of these was also likely to be double hop Es. The last two were ... who knows? TEP, F-layer, whatever. Certain stations near me were having open house working into LU and CE and good luck to them. The trick is to work them first and worry about the propagation later.

So here we are again still in May commenting on long distance 50MHz propagation. There is some juicy DX to worked in amongst the high volumes of Es around. What will the next month bring?

73 Jim

GM4FVM

10 May 2024 Aurora

 I was browsing about the news sites when I came across this on the RTÉ.ie pages:-

US authorities have issued the first Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch alert in almost 20 years as a powerful solar storm will hit Earth, with one enthusiast saying there's a "good chance" of seeing the Northern Lights in Ireland.

It is unusual for general news sites to carry anything which might be of any interest to radio amateurs or sky watchers. So this had to be something important. Further information could be found at VE3EN's Solarham had it not changed from Solarham.net to Solarham.com, which threw me off the track for a while - thanks to Mike GM3PPE for putting me right there. Anyway there were several big CMEs on the way towards Earth, and in a configuration which suggested that faster ones behind would merge with slower ones in front and produce a stronger effect here. And so it proved.

GM4PMK magnetometer on 10 May 2024

As usual click the image to enlarge if necessary.

I worked 22 stations during the aurora over the 24 hours after the first arrival of the particle stream. 21 were on 50MHz and one on 70MHz. All of them were on Q65 as I could not even attempt to use the microphone due to having the cold and 'flu. This activity covered 10 DXCC and 20 squares, with my best DX being to OE5OLL in JN68 at 1352km. I probably could have done more if I had been feeling better. I also spent some time between midnight and 02:00 local time out in the garden looking at the visual aurora.

50MHz auroral contacts at GM4FVM on 10 and 11 May 2024

All of these contacts were truly auroral with no tone audible, even the fairly close contact with Mike GM3PPE which is only 31km direct but a lot further via aurora. During the time I also had some very useful contacts with Dave, G0ODA on 432MHz and Gordon GM4OAS/M on 2m FM, but no aurora involved there! Having said that, there were reports of auroral contacts on 432MHz, so this was a very powerful event. I did not have 144MHz available at the time and it never even occurred to me to look at 70cm. Possibly a lifetime only chance missed there, but CW was beyond me at that stage.

One unusual feature was a fairly widespread Auroral Es opening across the Atlantic on 50MHz. I listened for about 30 minutes while others worked across the pond but nothing from there was heard here. I have often experienced Auroral Es during smaller openings, but I have never known of a trans Atlantic event.

The one Au contact I had on 70MHz was with G4BRK in IO91 (bringing the total square count to 21). This was my first Au contact on 4m using Q65. I was calling using the Q65-15C variant but Neil and I both noted how wide the signal was. Although many of us started out using Q65-15C during this event, most ended using 30C as it uses less bandwidth. I can see downsides to both approaches so some thought needs to be given as to which one we should use in future. Usually, decisions like this are made in amateur radio by somebody picking something and everybody following, whether that is right or wrong (like using 30 second periods for 2m MSK144 in Europe).

Anyway, this aurora brought a lot of activity much further South than we usually get, and it must have created new DX records for a lot of amateurs. It may well be a new Au DX record for me too. I must look it up.

I shall leave you with some photos I took of the visual aurora as seen from GM4FVM.

73 Jim

GM4FVM

Transatlantic on 6m, the "new normal" on 50MHz?

[Why do you keep writing about Sporadic E Jim?] 

Because there isn't anything else at present.

Not quite true, there have been several auroras. These events all have something in common - I missed them. I got back in on 2 May just in time to catch the last of a good aurora and on 50MHz I managed to work G8BCG in IO70, a distance of 623Km. This is a pretty good result on aurora for me as G8BCG is probably the furthest south I have worked on aurora in the UK. Sadly, I missed everything else in that event.

But it is true that I am not writing about big tropo openings on the higher bands because there have not been any. Maybe soon there will be. Other esoteric modes = zero.

So time to consider again the issue of transatlantic 6m propagation. This is not due to storms positioned 2000km apart across the ocean, as I have been reading recently. I shall stay away from further discussion of what the mechanism might be, other than a final guess.

Since my first transatlantic contact from here with VO1SO back on 18 June 2011, there have been 31 days when I have had 50MHz contacts across the North Atlantic. For this exercise I am excluding Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America - this is North Atlantic only. This was done in an attempt to screen out Trans Equatorial Propagation which is tricky to identify.

After that first contact I had to wait a week short of five years until the next one. Then there were two days in 2016, five days in 2017, six days in 2018, two days in 2019, five days in 2020, three days in 2021, none in 2022, and six in 2023. Plus one now in 2024.

There is one feature which applies to all 27 days of contacts across the North Atlantic up until the end of August 2023. All of the contacts in that period were during June, July or August. The earliest was 4 June and the latest was on 24 August. This shows the characteristic lag mentioned in the last posting for Es contacts in general, starting about 17 days before midsummer and ending 65 days after midsummer, making the lag about 7 weeks (see last posting). Not much data for this one so maybe that lag is a bit exaggerated.

What makes the last four contact dates unusual is that they fall way outside the usual pattern. The dates are 27 and 30 November 2023, 1 December 2023 and 1 May 2024. If I needed more evidence that the Es season is getting longer then here it is (if it is Es). Before this week my earliest QSO across the North Atlantic was 4 June. The latest one was 1 May. 

I only made two contacts that day, and I failed to confirm a third one (VE1SKY). There were several stations heard such as K1SIX, K7BV, K1KA, WW1L etc. The point here is that this was a substantial opening even if I only worked two stations.

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM on 1 May 2024.

So what propagation gives transatlantic 6m propagation on 1 May? Is that the same process as in November and December the previous year? When my previous contacts on this path have all been during the period from June to August, it makes me wonder.

Sporadic E which is vastly more sporadic than I have ever seen, or F-layer, or something else???

All the books say that Es is not influenced by the sunspot cycle, and I cannot really see how it could be. Surely not that.

73 Jim

GM4FVM