I had long since given up believing I would ever see a VHF/UHF tropo opening to the midwest. Tropo in this part of Maine is exceedingly rare. It seems like everyone gets more of it than we do. Southern New England sees several good tropo events every year, both to the midwest and down the coast. Our Canadian neighbors to the east and southeast get openings down the coast a few times a year. We, however, see many years with nothing beyond every day “brute force” troposcatter range of roughly 500 miles. Since I got on VHF in 1986 I have seen no more than five tropo events that reached beyond that. Every one of them was down the coast to extreme eastern Virginia and possibly extreme eastern North Carolina. Without looking back through paper logs I am uncertain what my best tropo DX was, but I believe it was under or around 800 miles. I am positive there was nothing over 850 miles.
The event that occurred on September 2, 2023 was quite a shock! On the afternoon of September 1 I had checked 10 GHz and discovered N1JEZ beacon, 195 miles away, was in weakly as it had been for several days back in July. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but as I continued to monitor it got stronger and I realized this was a real tropo event for short distances on microwaves. There was nothing on VHF however. Here is an audio recording of N1JEZ/b on 10 GHz. This was not at the peak time but solid copy at 10 to 15 dB out of the noise. In the center section of the clip I switched in the audio peak filter to enhance it a bit more.
Curious to see what would happen, I left the receiver monitoring when I went to bed. I was awakened at 3:00 in the morning by a screaming loud N1JEZ beacon. By the time I got myself functioning and into the shack it had already dropped in strength significantly, but a look at the APRS propagation map showed very strong tropo to my west and some paths passing by me to my northwest. I began monitoring and calling on 2 meter FT8. I could hardly believe it when I started decoding WB9ENB in EN71, a distance of over 800 miles. I soon worked him followed by KD2CDV in FN03 at 503 miles. Wow! Tropo to the midwest! This was a first for me!
Not long after that I worked W9FF in EN40tf, a distance of 1136 miles! Not only was I working the midwest, but I had just smashed by personal best tropo distance record by a few hundred miles! W9FF was so strong that I asked him on ON4KST chat if he could possibly work me on CW to fulfill a long time dream of making a tropo contact at that distance on a human decodable mode. Roger kindly agreed to take time out from working others to do so and we soon had a CW QSO with 559 reports exchanged both ways. I am eternally grateful for this kindness. That was a huge thrill for me! Here is an audio recording of W9FF on CW.
After a few more moderate distance QSOs on 144 and 222 MHz, VA3IKE tried me on 432. I only have 25 watts on that band and it was not getting the job done. We moved to Q65 mode to dig deeper into the noise and soon had completed a QSO of 716 miles. I thought that was pretty amazing under the circumstances. Little did I know what was about to happen.
After completing a 432 FT8 QSO with VE3DS, N0PB called me. I thought there was no way he could be hearing me at 1239 miles but I responded and it was a very easy FT8 QSO. Incredible! 1239 miles on 432 with just 25 watts! Phil was very audible in the speaker and would have been an easy CW or SSB QSO if I had more power. This is one of the very few digital QSOs that will be a life long memory. In general, I don’t get too excited about them, but this was special.
Other notables were AA9MY, 1088 miles on 222, W9FF 1136 miles on 432 (Q65), W9VHF 854 miles on 432 and 144, VA3IKE 716 miles on 144, and N0PB 1239 miles on 144. What an amazing event for a tropo-deprived Mainer. Here is the list of QSOs for the opening.
This was, as is usually the case, an all digital event except for the one QSO with W9FF. I spent some time calling CQ on 144 and 222 CW but had no takers. I did not hear anyone else on CW or SSB except for my VE9 friends at the end of the opening.