Arctic FM Season Has Already Started!

 They say that FM DX is a summer thing. Certainly, early May is not compatible with "summer", especially not in the Arctic. But it happened!

In the morning on May 6th I had two short (less than 2-3 minutes) Es openings, one at 05:53 UTC and the other at 08:20. Unnoticed without IQ recordings if I had not been there at the time, and very hard to spot had I not recorded half-hour waterfall BMP files with HDSDR. What a tool! It was quite easy to go back to the IQ recordings with SDR Console and pick the ripe berries.

The early morning opening was confined to all of southern Finland with the odd Russian joining in. The later one went to southern Sweden and northern Denmark. On an FM antenna pointing perpendicular to the logged stations!

Logmap (fmlist.org)

SDR Console's Navigator tool makes it super easy to navigate in time (albeit not in frequency) to find the spots where the signals are readable, and hopefully RDS-able. The example below shows two stations nearby each other, one being Swedish Radio P2 with their E402 PI code, surfacing for only a few seconds.

SDR Console's Navigator - navigates you to the interesting signals!

I admit I was a bit taken aback by this early start of the season. That said, from the beginning of my FM DX "career" nine years ago I've been surprised many times. So, don't forget: Expect the Unexpected!