Conditions on VHF

It started with this newsitem on Hamnieuws.nl (in Dutch) : https://hamnieuws.nl/afstandsrecord-op-432-mhz-alweer-verbroken/
Seems that there were conditions on VHF and UHF.

I didn’t have any all mode transceivers for V/UHF nor antennas, so I fired SDR# up and my RTL-SDR stick. This stick is connected to a simple Diamond X50 antenna, just 8 meters AGL.
To my surprise there was still activity on 144.174 MHz, the FT8 frequency on 2M. I started receiving after a small struggle with WSJT-X (serial port tried to open 2M on my Icom IC756, had to disable CAT functionality).

And not long after startup it showed some nice DX : EA1SI in Spain, about 1143 km from me. See the pictures for more stations I received. I could sit the whole day at my desk to monitor FT8 on VHF.

In the evening I saw a retweet from Raf, ON5RZ that showed the reception of a Norwegian DAB/DAB+ transmitter received in Belgium. Eager to see if my RTL stick would receive, I started Welle.io and Qt-dab.
There was not much to see in Welle.io but then Lille Etendu showed on the screen. That is in the northern part of France, but I don’t seem to find the exact transmitter location. in QT-Dab I also found Lille Local and Local 2.

And my best dx : Denmark DAB2 S.
This is in South Jutland : https://fmscan.org/net.php?r=d&m=m&itu=DNK&bouq=1&pxf=DAB2+S
Still a decent 540 km. Nice, but no audio, just 2 to 4 dB above the noise is a bit low for good decoding.

DAB_Denmark

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I also noticed a strong signal on 144.8875, it was SSTV. Some received pictures below.

Hist17

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