Sporadic-E Today!

[Pfraser]

Old-fashioned through-air DX; no Interweb! Plenty Arabic stations, presumably N African. Chaine 2 RDS ident on 101.2MHz at 0858 BST. CORAN (sic) on 104.8MHz, with Arabic music followed by news at 0900. Other Arabic stations on 97.2MHz and 98MHz.

Italian station on 98.5MHz, 0855.

RDS ident SNRT-OJD on 107.0MHz at 1003. Arabic music. Otherwise some French and Spanish stations around this time.

Receiver: Xhdata D-808 with telescopic aerial, 1st. floor indoors.

I did quickly check 10m for any CW or SSB activity. None heard.

[bikerhifinut]

I must plug the Triband co linear into the trusty old Icom756 and have a noodle around on 50Mhz!
I managed to work Corsica and the south of France last year on SSB and I have been informed by my Neighbour G4GXO that 10m was wide open yesterday afternoon.
Happy days!
Andy
2E0AND

[SiriusHardware]

I would normally expect 10m to wake up before 6m or 3m where SP-E is concerned. Sure this wasn't Tropo?

[bikerhifinut]

I'd imagine it was a skywave effect yes, but it was in reply to the previous comment of nothing heard on 10m.
I should have been clearer on that.

Andy

[SiriusHardware]

Sorry, my comment was to the OP (who had identified the propagation as SP-E but could not hear anything on 10m, so I wondered if it was Tropo instead. From what you say there certainly must be SP-E around at the moment.

[paulsherwin]

There's a whopping great high pressure system across most of Europe at the moment, from the UK to North Africa and east into Russia.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather...rface-pressure

[Pfraser]

I'm pretty sure yesterday's FM band opening was Sporadic-E. Classic fast and irregular QSB; much more 'mush' than usual; stations appearing from inaudible to fully-quieting & (hopefully) an RDS identification, then vanishing quickly!

Nothing unusual heard here around 0800-0900 BST today. There is some tropospheric propagation evident, but I class that as 'normal'. French stations often appear at moderate (hissy) strength if there's a bit of a lift. They are a bit stronger today.

[Hybrid tellies]

There has been quite a few good strong Sporadic E openings over the last few days.

The best Sporadic E opening that I have seen for quite a few years happened last Saturday afternoon with strong signals with positive RDS id from Algeria, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.
All just using the telescopic rod aerial of my Grundig Satellite 700.

[Dave757]

Hi

Worked Sicily on 2 metre SSB on the 11th. He was S9 with me.
Amazing really, with a Halo antenna in the loft of the bungalow,
and just a few feet above sea level.

My best DX on 2m here in the last 5 years.

Kind regards
Dave
G0ELJ

[Julesomega]

Yes, there's no sign of any tropospheric propagation occurring during this high pressure system - keep an eye on William Hepburn's Tropospheric Forecast
Sustained tropo normally happens during the gradual collapse of a sustained high pressure system
Nice work for those who caught this SpE

[G6Tanuki]

10M Sp.E has been good this last week; I've worked Spain/Portugal/Corsica/Italy/Cyprus/Malta and loads of stations in Czech Republic/Slovakia/Slovenia/Moldova using just 25 Watts of SSB to an 8-foot whip on my little PRC320.

[Pfraser]

Signs of Sp-E life over the last 25 minutes: various Spanish stations on the FM band generally and an Arabic one on 87.7MHz.

[Junk Box Nick]

Clearly a bit of a lift on this morning. Given today’s excitement I took a little AM/FM portable with a broken antenna but good enough to receive Sutton Coldfield into the bathroom. Looking for Radio 4 on 92.7 I found Radio Wales. The band seemed very busy.

[Hybrid tellies]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

Clearly a bit of a lift on this morning. Given today’s excitement I took a little AM/FM portable with a broken antenna but good enough to receive Sutton Coldfield into the bathroom. Looking for Radio 4 on 92.7 I found Radio Wales. The band seemed very busy.

That sounds like a weather or tropo enhancement rather than Sporadic E.
On FM or DAB With tropo or weather lifts you typically get signal enhancements up to 200-300 miles. Last night there was a slight weather lift on and I was getting good reception from more distant high powered National Network FM transmitters up to 200 miles away, when normally they are near the noise floor. This just using a portable communications radio with its telescopic rod aerial.

During Sporadic E opening you can get strong FM signals from transmitters typically between 400-1200 miles distance. Sporadic E does not affect, or very seldom, affects the DAB band because of the higher frequencies used.

The other clue to look out for is that tropo or weather enhanced signals are much more stable often with little or no fading whereas Sporadic E signals can fade in and fade out very rapidly accompanied by rapidly varying multipath affects and high levels of co channel interference. It can be fun especially during Sporadic E FM openings to Italy.

[SiriusHardware]

Fun on 11m as well, I'll be up in north west Scotland for a week shortly and I always select a radio from my collection of 1980s CB radios to take with me as the chance of a SP-E opening from that area to the south and south east UK is quite high, given that those two areas are far enough apart to fall within 'normal' SP-E propagation distance. It also helps that in the remote north west, local man-made noise is at virtually zero.

Given a strong enough opening, 4 watts is all I ever need.

[G6Tanuki]

There's definitely something of an imprvement at the moment: usually I can _just_ hear the 2M GB3BC repeater above the noise but today it was S4; OTOH GB3VA near Aylesbury is usually S4 here but today was noticeably down in terms of signal-strength and there was a 'burbly' in the background from another repeater on the same frequency.

Alas I took my 12AVQ HF antenna down for maintenance last week; so no 28MHz fun for me!