Ticking boxes….

Yesterday I noticed that the foF2 was looking very promising and I had a pretty good feeling that this would result in exceptional 6m propagation not only in the normal TEP window, but possibly even into Asia, Far East and the Middle East before that.

Well I was wrong. Nothing spectacular happened. In fact the conditions were pretty poor. However I was very aware of the fact that Diya Z81D in the Southern Sudan was now also active on 6m. Sudan lies only slightly north of the equator and TEP would not be possible, the solar numbers don’t look all that good so a F2 opening was unlikely.

Diya appeared on the ON4KST cluster and I immediately asked him to turn his beam south. He did, but we heard nothing so he turned north again and he worked a few Europeans. I remained on the frequency and low and behold about an hour later I heard his signal briefly, just above the white noise.

The rest is history…. Z81D Southern Sudan’s DXCC box can now be ticked as worked.

The 6m band hold many surprises, no wonder it is often referred to as the Magic Band.

54 down, 46 to go....

foF2 14 March 2013 07:00 Z