Something happened late at night on January 20, 2026. The people experiencing it weren’t sure what it was.
A few hardy souls were sitting around their computers watching the WTFDA’s prop logger (the WLogger) and with auroral DX on their minds, not thinking about anything else with their antennas pointing north.
Things changed when one of them began seeing analog TV DX on ch2 from the south instead of north, and as time went on, TV audio and video were seen from Venezuela, Colombia and Nicauagua.
This wasn’t E skip. It didn’t look like E skip. It didn’t sound like it either. It was F2 layer skip, something that hasn’t been seen by TV DXers in North America since the two day event in early January of 2001! (the three photos on the left are mine from 2001).
Watch Andrews video here and here.
Listen to Jim Thomas’ ch2,3,4 audio here. These have been IDed as coming from Colombia.
Will it take another 25 years before F2 skip climbs up to ch2 or ch3? And if it does, will there be any analog TV stations left in South America to watch?
Extremely doubtful.