No Es-Season in Germany in 2019!

[PFM907]

13 days without the slightest trace of any activity here near the Baltic Sea coast.
2019 Sporadic-E Season is over, before it even really has gotten started yet.

German DXers have stated the season to be almost non existent this Summer:
https://www.rundfunkforum.de/viewtopic. ... 812d9501ae

What a really poor year. Definitely the worst results ever.
2019, I have had less within a month (Mid May-Mid June) than in every 14 day May period (15th-31st May) ever!!!

I will be doomed to sell all my radio / antenna stuff. Without conditions, I won't be needing this any longer.
There is no Tropo here for weeks now, too.

Sorry for the bad karma but it is really disappointing and annoying to see a pleasure going to waste in such manner.

[Jim (Bournemouth)]

I feel your pain.
At a time when I am better equipped software wise than ever, nature chooses this year to produce a complete dud.
Also, so many openings 40 miles or so away produce nothing here.

I hope things will pick up, but now it's mid-June, things rarely get better from here in any season. This year may be beyond rescue.

[daveB]

Definitely the worst year here in the South-East of England since I began DXing in 2013 - June 1st and June 12th are the only days I've had significant reception. This year it seems I'm just on the edge of the SpE clouds to the South of me. In 2017 I was just on the edge of SpE clouds to theEast (!).

"Fortunately" I live close enough to Europe to get regular signals from Belgium and France - so I know the aerial systems are functioning correctly.

The only answer is to record a wideband signal for many hours and then check the files. I record in blocks of 4 or 5 minutes using the Baseband Recorder SDR # and review then on File Player in SDR#. Opening out the waterfall wide allow me to spot short lived SpE signals and quickly work past the one without any SpE.

Today it looks like I've got an hour's worth of reception from 1130-1230 UTC to go through, and some odd bits around 16:30-18:30. That should keep me occupied for a day or two if there is no new reception.

Certainly looks like it is associated with the sunspot minimum as although Cenetral Europe is gettig aSpE season reception reports are well down on earlier years. All we need to spoil things totally is a Maunder (or Dalton) minimum in sunspot activity in the decade ahead .

[Nick Gilly]

Look out for Libya in the later opening Dave. I had several channels in on & off.

[Marc Vissers]

Worst season here in Belgium too since I started (again) in 2014. Been recording every single day for about 16 hours per day, but not a bit in there the last 14 days In fact best days here were May 24th and 28th until so far. Still waiting for a classic big opening towards Spain or Italy on short term. Hope things take a turn for the better soon ...

[Paul_Logan]

It's certainly a very odd season. Yesterday was great at my location with good openings to Spain, Portugal, Madeira, Canary Islands - but it really was the first very good day. Everything else has been lack lustre with many days of little or no activity.

Openings to the east just aren't happening.

[Jim (Bournemouth)]

The lack of openings to the East is stark. I have yet to log a single Es signal from north of the 50 degree latitude line, and here we are in mid-June.

[John Faulkner, Skegness]

It's depressing. As often happens, May shows signs of promise. There were three days of Es noticed here, with a particularly good Balkan day on May 25th. Then ........

Occasional Algerian, Spanish and Portuguese signals have been heard very briefly over the last couple of few days. None have reached RDS. As Jim says, it's mid-June!

[theme]

All of that while the usual suspect far to the east is having midnight ES... Haven't gotten anything in 2 days either (apart from RNE 1 at 10 - but that was it)

[Mad Radio DXer]

Apart from the early opening of eastern Europe, this is the worst Es season I can remember since I really got into it in 2010. Last year was bad too. Today I have had a few signals but just teases. I know in past seasons it can be late kicking off, & in one year there were good openings in August when usually it would have mostly ended. Still time but I really want a good opening I can sit down & enjoy rather than the random teases that has been happening since that eastern European skip.