The destructive thunderstorm in the Köln/Düsseldorf area last night was intense enough to provide rainscatter even on 1.3 GHz. DB0AJA near Würzburg in JN59AS could be heard with the typical rainscatter sound when the dish was heading 325°. An awful lot of water must have been in the air. The total distance of the signal path was about 400 km (150 + 250).
The waterfall shows the spread of the signal. DB0AJA runs 20 W output into a 16 element Flexa yagi beaming northwest.
Since I will be back in Ireland in August, I plan to be QRV for the perseids on meteor scatter, activating my irish callsign EI8HH. The location is in Clonbur, Co.Galway, IO53HN. My equipment will be a FT-897 with 50 W into a 17 element yagi (F9FT) on 144 MHz.
My last MS QSOs dated back to 1989, when high speed CW was state of the art. To gather some experience with WSJT and FSK441, I watched the 144.370 MHz and worked YO9MN and GM6VXB randomly.
Another test with GM4ZJI couldn´t be completed, because we had to leave for QRL. But I got a nice burst from him at the end of our try:
065730 12.5 260 13 27 -158 FO5AR GM4ZJI 26 26 DJ5AR GM4ZJI 26 .9C$H
065730 12.8 840 10 26 -151 DJ5AR GM4ZJI 7 DJ5AR GM4ZJI 26 26 D
065730 13.8 120 2 26 -158 J AR GM4ZJI #6 / ,C
Later I worked Dermot, EI7IX, from Westport, very close to my irish QTH (a compilation of his bursts):
094000 17.7 340 13 27 -43 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73
094100 11.9 520 6 26 -58 NX/73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX
094100 25.3 440 11 27 -41 YX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 73 EI7IX 7