A 2 m opening was announced at 9650 km towards Japan. The callsigns gave it
away — 7M4RRM, JA7RPC, JF1AWC — all working EME, which is routine on 2 m and
reported to PSK Reporter like anything else. Real contacts, real grids, and no
evidence whatsoever about the band: an operator turning a beam on that bearing
would hear nothing.
Removing the flat 2400 km ceiling was right; it threw away genuine multi-hop Es
on 6 m. "No limit anywhere" was the overcorrection. The limit is per band now,
and it is physics rather than a threshold: 2 m reaches a few thousand kilometres
by tropospheric duct or a chain of Es clouds and no further, so 3500 km, and
4 m 4000. Six and ten metres keep no ceiling — multi-hop Es and F2 genuinely do
go round the world, which is the case that started all this.
Pinned from both sides: the 9650 km Japanese burst produces nothing, and a
2000 km 2 m burst in one sector still counts.
