Caught my first 50MHz opening of the year

It's always good when the Es season starts. I associate Es contacts with the sun, being away in the Mediterranean - things I like!

Just after lunch I saw a tweet reporting some 70MHz activity from the Netherlands to Finland. I popped up and checked, finding 50MHz fairly quiet. However, an interesting beacon coming in was OY6BEC - quite short skip. Tried a few CQs on CW but no luck. Up on SSB SP3OCC was coming in, but couldn't work him. I scraped a QSO with SP5SS before finding some CW activity.

Best DX over the next hour or so was into Estonia, but I had several contacts with SM, OZ, LY, OE, HA, E7 and IS0.

A good start to the season!