DX

[wazuck]

I had a shock today, took my alan 42 to work with me to listen out at breaktime, all of a sudden, 19uk came alive with Scottish voices, at first I thought it was Scottish truckers passing nearby on the A470, but then realised it was a combination of local breakers and DXers mainly from the Glasgow areas but also some English guys calling DX, a lot of the stuff was R2-3, but quite a few were an R5.
Couldn't see the signal strength in the sunlight (LCD), but sounded like it could have been 30+, but what surprised me most was that the 42 was getting this stuff with that crappy rubber duck that comes with the set!, only thing I could think of was must have been some sporadic E around .
Anyone else come across this today?.

[The Collector]

Para999 mentioned on another thread that he'd had a load of stuff coming through on his previously near-silent new set-up. Seems conditions were ripe for a bit of long-distance conflabbing today.

As for me, I've been busy childminding so I heard bugger all

[alze]

Posted on another thread, was driving back from North Wales, got to Southampton and it went *crazy* - never heard the radio so busy in all my life (remembering the days from the 80's) - signals from Wales, Scotland, Ireland and London - it was so busy, but amazing as well.
How often does this happen ? It really was incredible to (try!) and participate in it all !

[para999]

yes I had the same it did remind me of the 'old days'.all we need now is for the skip to be right and get the americans (who have a habit of talking to themselves) and I would think I was back in the 80's.

[original45]

Yup it was booming, didn't do any dx and only noted by the fact the am radio I was testing out had someone talking on nearly half the frequencies I visited.
Europe was booming in and last night a friend only 12 miles away reported Spanish operators were ott my signal at times of stronger skip.

[The Collector]

When the lower atmospheric layers get ionised, then shorter-distance dx occurs. Usually it's a lot higher up and then greater distances are heard.
I can't hear friggin' 10 miles away yet I bet I'd have heard all them buggers blocking up the airwaves!

[GrumpyFinn]

Nice to hear other parts of the world are getting some too... in the last three days we've had some nice, but short, windows to Caribbean, my furthest afternoon QSO was 737 Montego Bay, Jamaica, also towards North I've had 740 Missouri and 316 Illinois.... I'm in 470 Palm Beach Florida. Not quite what we used to have in the -80's, when I was still living in Finland. We'll see what next year brings