20 May 2014

6m - Tuesday May 20th - some lunchtime Es

A very uneventful morning so far on 6m WSPR with just the usual strong reports from Nick G4IKZ (18km) on the far side of Cambridge. No Es yet, although it is early in the day. At  the moment, 6m is very slow going with LOTS of WSPRing during the day for (maybe) a fleeting opening. At least with WSPR you can do something else whilst monitoring and TXing.

Maybe the 6m band will open up later?  Sunspot count is 130 and 20-30MHz forecast to be "normal". Again, 10m propagation will be whatever. 6m will remain "sporadic" with lots of white noise. It would be good to hit a period of 6m Es that lasts all day. It is early in the season I guess. On 6m I'd be very lucky to see any real long distance DX.


UPDATE 1435z: Well patiently 6m WSPRing paid off with spots from Morocco by CN8LI (2113km) late lunchtime today (best -5dB S/N at 1404z).  With that report, he would have copied me if my ERP was just a few mW, given a quiet RX environment his end.  This is a problem nowadays: often the RX noise floor can be quite bad, especially in towns and cities with so much RF noise pollution.   CN8LI was also spotting me (more weakly) at teatime (1612z) - see table above. 1W ERP seems plenty for Es.

UPDATE 1930z: No further Es in evidence here since CN8LI at 1612z. Think that is it for today?

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