It was a real achievement by Roger and Eric, and I was impressed. While the propagation mechanisms remain somewhat unclear, what is clear is the value of having the dedication to simply be there. That sounds obvious but one of the biggest obstacles on LF/MF, particularly in this part of the world, is the small number of operators, and still fewer willing to keep unsocial hours.
Being an upstart on 630 m this year I was pleased enough to work Roger (3610 km) and another interstate station on JT9 and, with a small interest group here in VK6 now pursuing some interesting MF developments, one of us might even manage to complement those first contacts with some international ones. I must say, though, that the Indian Ocean is proving more stubborn than the Pacific, although geography and demographics go some way to explaining that.
While I note K9LA's preference for multi-hop propagation in explaining the VK4 - East Coast N. America paths, I'm not aware of any intermediate reception reports, which one might have expected with the listener density in NA. But that's just an observation; I have no better explanation to offer.
I have found the content of the RSGB LF Group forums (
https://groups.io/g/rsgb-lf-group/) to be very interesting, with a number of well-known operators from around the world posting regularly. There have been some interesting propagation discussions conducted at a pretty high level, and I enjoy seeing the results of European and NA trials of LF encoding/decoding modes which approach the theoretical channel limits.
73, Peter.