First signs of good tropo were visible 17th of October: OZ0JX and SK7MW were coming with nice signals, but no other stations.
Real show begun next day (18th of October) at the late afternoon hours: OZ and SM7 stations, some with S9 signals (QRB 1000 to 1100 km)! Except OZ and SM7, duct was covering DL and SP Baltic area too. I started to work abt 18Z, duct was present much earlier. After midnight Z signals disappeared. Results of that day: 5 OZ and 9 SM7 stations. UFB opening, but I didn't know it was just a beginning, the best part still have to come.
Next day (19th of October) I turn on station at 15Z, and first I heard was station in CW QSO giving QTH loc JP70! It was SK4AO from JP70TO, QRB 1574 km. Final result: SM1, SM4, SM5, SM6, SM7 and SM0 are in the log! 24 SM stations from 11 different grids, 6 OZ (3 grids), 1 LY and lot of DL and SP from Baltic area (8 stns over 1400 km, 15 over 1200, 32 over 1000). Most of the day I was listening SK4MPI beacon from JP70NJ (1552 km) coming with S2. SM5BSZ (JO89JI, 1438 km) was S9! "Shortskip" big guns, like SK7MW (JO65MJ, 1019km) were 59+20db. Last QSO was at 23:58Z, but SK1VHF beacon (JO97CJ, 1222 km) was still coming with S6. There were no more stations active.
20th of October I worked OZ0JX again, but with S4 only. Conditions were over here, but duct turn to S/W - N/E directions. Rest of the day PA stations were enjoying nice conds to Baltic area. Here is the map showing grids worked from JN86EL:
Click here to see 9A1CAL TR log from 17th to 20th of October 2001, or here to display log sorted by QRB. Here is log sorted by callsigns. If you want to search for a specific callsign, click here.
There were more QSO-s those days, but online log is containing QSO-s over 600 km only. Some of QSO-s included in the log (JO62, JO72, etc.) we can work without any special TR conds, but that time their signals were much stronger as usual, I think they were included into duct area too. Good duct conditions were over wide spread over north DL and SP Baltic Area, OZ and SM, ending in SM4 at north. Contrary to steady 2-day opening to OZ / SM, conds to LY (KO14) were short living (a few minutes prop only).