[MW] 1377 kHz - Radio Free Africa, Mwanza 🇹🇿 - auroral DX to Poland, May 2 2024

After a few big storms & CMEs that mostly disappointed, we finally observed some auroral conditions on AM - mainly, an enhancement of signals coming south of me - in my case, Greece and Africa.
This is Radio Free Africa, an entertainment station from Mwanza, off Lake Victoria, Tanzania. Its 50kW signal on 1377 kHz doesn't reach Europe during normal conditions somehow - in fact, US stations from a similar distance are a lot more common, and so is China on 1377 itself - but when a good CME hits & Bz latitude goes south, that's when southerly directions really open up. And as you can imagine, it's not that common!
Another factor that helped this reception was that I made it outside of TWR Armenia operating hours - its Ukrainian service is scheduled until 19:47 UTC, while this capture was done at 20:41 UTC.
There were a few carriers present at the time of RFA reception, with two strongest ones being RFA itself on 1376.990 and an Iranian station on 1376.93 (roughly; no accurate measurement was taken). The two stations battled & distorted each other, so I had best results unchecking Lock Carrier & manually locking to the Tanzanian carrier in SDR# Micro Tuner window. (OBS Studio doesn't capture it for some reason when unpinned though.)
Received in NE Poland at 20:41 UTC May 2nd, 2024 with Airspy HF+ Discovery & ~12x4.5m KAZ beaming ~180deg, with distance & bearing to Radio Free Africa as 6223km & 168deg.

[@oz_dx]

Fantastic catch!

[@ArnieDXer]

Hey, there may be more, as the sun is really shooting those flares away XD one just peaked 10 minutes ago!