Sporadic-E (Es)

We are now on the verge of the summer Es season in Europe and the USA, so 50MHz should be good out to about 2000km. Occasionally much further is possible, allowing Asian, South American, Caribbean and North American stations to work Europe.

There is a good explanation of sporadic-E on the UKSMG website.  See http://www.uksmg.org/content/sporade.htm . If you are not familiar with this mode then I suggest you read it.

Es is great fun and just 1W ERP of SSB is enough to work most of Europe, and even beyond, from the UK.  Openings on 70MHz are less common and even less so on 144MHz. There are even more Es openings on 28MHz. If you have a big, high beam and high power it will help, but Es signals are often strong and I have not found QRP is much of a handicap on 50MHz Es. Yes, if you are after tropo or MS DX then I am sure the bigger ERP would be useful, but far less so with Es.

Personally I hope there is far more use made of WSPR this Es season. WSPR allows short openings to be seen: it requires plenty of active stations though. The temptation is to abandon the quieter bands and move downwards.  Before leaving 50MHz, think just how much your presence on WSPR could mean. By staying around and sending or looking for WSPR signals you would be really contributing to radio research.