Trans-Atlantic opening on the 50 MHz band – Fri 16th Dec 2022

There was an interesting trans-Atlantic opening on the 50 MHz band between Europe and North America on Friday the 17th of December 2022 and it looks as if it was either F2 layer or multi-hop Sporadic-E propagation.

The map above shows the 50 MHz paths open via FT8 for AB1OC in New Hampshire. There is evidence of plenty of Sporadic-E activity to the eastern half of the United States but several stations in the UK and Ireland can seen.

There are plenty of openings on the 50 MHz band at the moment but most of them are from areas closer to the equator. In the last week or so, there have been some very long paths across the Pacific from Australia and New Zealand to the USA. What makes the North Atlantic opening interesting is that it was East-West and it was from a northerly latitude.

It looks as if the opening itself was reasonably modest and it was mainly confined to what might be described as ‘large stations’ i.e. the numbers were in the tens rather than the hundreds.

WW1L in Maine and W3UR in Maryland have similar list of FT8 across the Atlantic…

Looking from the eastern side of the Atlantic, the FT8 paths for EI3KD on the south coast of Ireland are shown above. I’ve included the full path lists for EI3KD and G1IFX at the end of this post.

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