E "not so" Sporadic

Every summer we get some openings on the Sporadic E layer, up to 70 or 80 MHz , but this year seems that the ionosphere woke up on the right side of the bed.

Around the summer solstice and till today (July 9th) looks like the “mercurial” inosphere E Layer has been active daily, giving a lot of fun.

The OIRT band (the FM broadcast band of the ex soviet block between 65.8 and 74 MHz) almost daily, shows an intense activity with a lot of radio stations, some with a signal comparable to a local station. Don't you believe me? Look below here, there are a couple videos recorded during these openings.

Probably also our FM Broadcast band has been affected by these propagation events, but living basically below one the biggest transmitting center in Italy, doesn't give me any chance to scan the 88-108 band to search something that is not a local station, national or simply echoes from more far transmitters.

Sadly, there are no more analog tv channels on VHF low band, otherwise it would have been nice to receive those as well...patience, let's enjoy what we have.

Here are some details and some little tips.

The wikipedia page about the Sporadic E - Sporadic E propagation - Wikipedia

OIRT STATIONS LIST

Here you can download the daily updated list with the OIRT radio stations, surprisingly there are also stations that are not from East Europe, like from Italy.. and Chile. For Italy, it seems to be feeds for FM transmitters. I can receive one as well on 57 MHz.

https://www.fmlist.org/oirt.php

VIDEOS

Here are some nice videos recorded by myself.

This is the great opening of June 26th

And here the one of July 1st.

I didn't log these stations, you can have fun to log them by yourself, using the list I posted over here.

To receive I used the SDR Play, RSP 1 and the Maxi Whip antenna by Eng. Claudio Re, that also this time, worked greatly!

Have fun with your radio!