Sporadic E 2013: Mid Season Analysis

Sporadic E 2013: Mid Season Analysis

Personally, this has been the best sporadic E season I have known on the FM broadcast band. I will try to be more specific, but suffice to say there has been a lot more of it! Here is a brief, non-technical analysis.

The main factor has been the almost daily occurrence of E skip reaching 88 MHz and above.

Signal strengths have generally been quite weak when the MUF has only reached the lower section of the band - up to 94 MHz or so. By "weak", I refer to zero to two bars on the signal meter on the KT6040. When the Es have extended to the top of the band I tend to find that the Es can reach good levels, sometimes qite strong, reaching a full five bars on the KT6040 and across the whole band. So strong that they can sometimes take out my local Belmont transmitter!

There have been many more days than usual where the Es have flirted with the bottom of the band, never amounting to much and which haven't developed into a full-scale band-wide opening. While this has been frustrating, I think it is an indication that the MUF has generally been much higher, because those 'flirty' Es would be zero Es in other years.

Another curious factor of this year's Es season was its early start. I have been joking that the season peaked in late April, but that isn't far from the truth. May had some excellent openings too, but June, while still being very good, has seen a gradual decline in those strong, band-wide openings.

The pattern of Es seems to have been more predictable this year, with morning openings, typically between 07:00 and 10:00. Then evening openings typically between 17:00 and 20:00. Sporadic E can happen at any time and while these are the traditional peak times for sporadic E, the regularity of this has been obvious, with very little variation.

As for anything unusual, only one thing springs to mind, though I doubt it means anything. There have been more instances of openings into the Atlantic with the Canaries being received on two occasions (double hop, but perhaps more likely Es to Portugal and tropo the rest of the journey) and the Azores has been received several times. Openings into the Atlantic are often missed as there are no warning signs. What would you receive if the band was open into a body of water? Nothing! Then suddenly the Azores appear out of nowhere.

There have been more instances of Greece and the Balkans this season too, plus my first possible reception of turkey on 98.0 with a tentative Radyo Cihan from Canakkale on 98.0. Greece and the Balkans were present across much of band 2 at the time. I have noticed that the Es clouds have regularly been producing high MUFs over eastern Europe and this has given me these Es when the clouds have gradually drifted westward.

The highlight for me has been the sheer number of loggings. I have amassed 2572 individual sporadic E loggings at June 30th, the most I have ever had for a single season and we're only about half way through it!

My notes will be meaningless to most people since sporadic E is just that ... "sporadic". There is no way of predicting who receives what and when. Some people get it, others don't. Take the experience of the USA this year. A DXer in the north-east of the US recently told me that they haven't had an Es season so far and that there has been only one day of decent band 2 Es to shout about. Europe has been awash with Es, regularly spreading up into the 2m amateur band!

So, as always, what is an excellent season for some, will have been a lesser season for others. That's sporadic E for you.