Super sporadic-E

This morning there was a super sporadic-E opening that appeared to be concentrated over southern France / northern Spain. Being Sunday I was up a bit later than usual, but when I checked the VHFDX.net real-time maps I saw a good 2m opening taking place between eastern Europe and Spain and Portugal. At the same time, 6m was wide open. With a contest taking place Six sounded more like 20m! My dilemma was whether to go on 6m and make a lot of contacts or listen on 2m in the hope of the rare prize of a DX contact there.

In the end I went on 6m, but switched back to Two when the real-time maps showed some stations in England making contacts. However, I didn't hear anything, and the DX Cluster didn't report any 2m contacts made by stations in the northern half of England. It appears to be one of life's great injustices that the south of England gets far more 2m sporadic-E than the rest of us.

On 6m I managed to work Ukraine (twice) and San Marino (which is quite possibly a new one for me on any band) as well as most of the usual culprits. I didn't hear anything from the USA although I heard some of the more southerly located stations working them.