2024 was the year of the Northern Lights – at least if you live in northern Germany. In May and October, we were able to marvel at this extremely rare celestial spectacle in Germany. In October, I took advantage of the auroras to use overreach in the 2m band.
After marvelling at the auroras in the sky on 10 October at around 22:00 local time, I disconnected my X5000 from my vintage FT736R and connected the vertical antenna for digimodes to the FT991A.
You can have whatever opinion you like about FT8, but it is an excellent digimode for checking propagation conditions. On PSK-Reporter I could see that the furthest signal reached Belgium’s southernmost coastal strip in 463km. Impressive, and impossible under normal conditions without the reflections of the radio signals from the auroras.
I was also able to make some QSOs with distant stations from Siegen (194 km away), the Odenwald (305 km away) and the Netherlands (138 km away) via FT-8.
The Northern Lights were also a unique event away from the radio. Here are some pictures at my QTH:
May 2024
October 2024