Opening on the 50 MHz band between Europe and Australia – 16th Jan 2023

On the 16th of January 2023, there was an opening on the 50 MHz band between Australia and Europe. Tom, SP5XMU supplied the screenshot above which suggests that there was plenty of activity.

I had a closer look at this opening and what I present below is an overview of what it was like. It’s not an extensive list of all the contacts or paths but I feel it gives a good representation.

While the image above suggests an extensive opening, it would seem that the footprint of the opening in Europe and Australia was confined to certain geographical areas.

The map above shows the FT8 paths from VK6KXW in the west of Australia. The number of European stations is quite low and the main footprint is in Portugal, Spain and the west of France.

VK6IR is also in the west of Australia and the image above shows the FT8 paths in Europe. Again, it’s a relatively small geographic area in Europe. Notice how the F2 signals seemed to have jumped over Italy and Greece.

The image above shows the 6m paths from VK5BC near Adelaide. Note the little cluster of signals from the west of France.

This image shows the paths from VK3WK near Melbourne. Same pattern again. From what I can tell, the stations near Sydney and the VK4 stations further up the coast near Brisbane were not able to access this particular opening.

The longest path that I saw was 17,875kms between CT1IUA in Portugal and VK3DUT in the SE of Australia.

These are the spots from the DX cluster which seems to concur with the observations above…

All the activity seems to have been FT8 on 50.313 MHz.

Analysis… Over the last few years, we’ve seen some multi-hop Sporadic-E or something similar during the months of June and July. In this case, it would seem to have been a genuine F2 layer opening on 50 MHz with the solar flux up over 230.

As we get closer to the equinox, I suspect we might see more 6m openings like this. The question is if they will reach further north in Europe and further south to the likes of Tasmania and New Zealand?

The huge difference with this solar cycle is that there are a lot more people using a weak signal mode like FT8 on one frequency i.e. if there is any sort of opening, the signal will be heard and reported.

That may bring it’s own problems if the opening is too good though with everyone on the same frequency.

Australia to Europe FT8 paths as reported by PSK Reporter.

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