2020 was an absolutely excellent year for Sporadic-E on the 50 MHz, 70 MHz and 144 MHz bands. Already from the 30th May to the 1st June 2020 there was the best Sporadic-E openings I can remember, even better than my previous best VHF propagation experience way back on the 17th June 1989.
For me the 70 MHz band was the highlight this year, as it appears I am located too far North now to enjoy the 144 MHz openings. The higher mountains all around my current QTH are simply too much of an obstacle for my simple station.
Interestingly there was some very short skip via Es on 50 MHz, one QSO I had was only 406km away giving a MUF of around 133 MHz.
The Quad Band vertical Collinear has performed better than my 50 MHz horizontal loop surprisingly.
Once again I am frustrated by the weekly VHF Propagation forecasts from the RSGB that continue to wildly promote the Jet Stream as being the key factor for Sporadic-E propagation, this was one theory put forward by some amateurs, but it absolutely does not correlate with many observed openings, indeed the best opening I have ever observed in the past 35 years, from 30th May to the 1st June 2020, had no jet stream prediction for it from the RSGB VHF forecast.
Here in the shack a new equipment addition has been a SDSRplay RSP1A receiver which I use for monitoring both HF and VHF Band II FM DX, its performance has been good so far.
Remarkably the VHF Sporadic-E season has still not ended as I write this in January 2021, in September, October, November and December there were at least three significant long duration Es openings each month on 50 MHz around Europe, and even now in January there are still some. I cannot recall this ever happening before.