Great 2m Opening Last Night

I got a text message from a buddy of mine, Jim KC8JPZ, last night around 10:00pm saying that 2 meters was hot. Unfortunately, I don't have any good antennas up for that band - just a mobile diamond SG-7900A attached to a metal chair in the room. I have a 3 element yagi I made out of PVC and a tape measure for direction finding, but trying to hook that up in the room is more of a challenge than I wanted to mess with.

Apparently, the APRS propagation map was showing a lot of red - the hot zone for tropo - in our area. VHFDX didn't show the MUF because everyone entered their contacts as tropo. Tropospheric ducting is independent of the upper levels of the atmosphere, so there is no way to, say, calculate where an E cloud is like you can in an Es opening on 6m.

Anyway, I tuned to 144.200 just for the heck of it, on my mobile antenna, and I could hear some weak stations in there! I waited a while longer, tuning around, and caught a couple louder stations.

The first guy I worked was Richard WB0NQD in EM29 on SSB. Then I worked KC0CF in EN32 on CW a few minutes later. All this from EN80 on an indoor mobile antenna - vertically polarized to boot!

I really wish I had my beams up. I have a 13B2 for 144 and an M2 440-21ATV for 432. The only time I get to use those these days is when I am roving in a contest or operating in EN39. I can't put up any outside antennas here at the house. If I did have the antennas up, last night would have been spectacular!