A weekend of Sporadic E

For no apparent reason, despite it seeming to have been a good Sporadic E season, I'd managed to miss it all this year, until last weekend when I made some contacts that I was pleased with.

I had a couple of really good contacts on 29MHz FM from the mobile; DL8MDH near Munich on the Saturday and PD1DTH on Sunday. Signals were really strong with both stations. Derk, PD1DTH, located in the centre of the Netherlands was using 25 watts to a dipole and was a massive signal - just like a local.

Six metres was busy, very busy, for most of the weekend with a contest. Actually, it was so busy that I only had a handful of contacts. I did hear the San Marino club station, T70A at one point.

Most interestingly for me was 70MHz, where I use the FT847 (rather deaf!) and a vertical. On Saturday evening, noticing that 50MHz was really buzzing, I tuned to 70MHz. I found the beacon CS5BFM on 70.166 which I'd not heard before. Tuning up the band I found a loud English voice and wondered which one of my locals it was. It turned out to be Keith, CT1JAD who I was delighted to work for my first 4 metre contact with Portugal. I heard Keith again several times on Sunday as well. With the band obviously open on Sunday lunchtime, but no stations audible with me, I tried a CW CQ just LF of 70.200 and was delighted when 9A6R came back.