Yesterday, I spotted far fewer stations across Europe on 6m FT8 RX and I had fewer stations spotting me on 10m WSPR TX. Now, this may just be a blip and there might be Es openings for some while to come. I have had 6m QRP SSB QSOs with Sweden in September. Es openings can happen at any time, but are most common in late spring and early summer.
If this follows the usual pattern, we can expect fewer openings in the months ahead. When good, signals can be strong, but we can expect fewer openings. This is why WSPR and FT8 are so good: there are lots of people monitoring all day long and people are looking in a fairly narrow chunk of the band.
In the peak months Es can transform 10m and 6m with the bands wide open for hours on end.
I suspect 10m and 6m openings by Es are far more common. Maybe with FT8 and WSPR will make such openings more obvious.
UPDATE 0750z: Just 3 stations spotted so far today on 10m FT8 RX and only 1 outside the UK.
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