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ARRL DX CW 2011

By w4kaz, created on 2011.02.20 at 18:05:28 | last changed on 2011.02.20 at 20:33:30 |

“E’ Says E’s not dead yet!”

Some life in 10m. Not fabulous for the peanut whistle, but a lot better than recent times.

20m was really pretty good compared to recent excursions into the ether. At least for the short times operated. It was pretty cool to hop on 20m, call CQ, and have a 150Q 10 minute rate. The rate didn’t last for more than 15 minutes, but it was great to have a whack at what can happen when conditions improve. Too bad it doesn’t happen more often.

10m and 15m had signals, but not a lot of mixed success trying to work them. For a change, 20m was easier. The 10m/15m antenna situation may change. It looks like there may be room to pull a dual band dipole up in the current home of he 10m/15m loop. That should play better since the effective height of the antenna will be significantly higher.

Tried a short run on 40m around 2030Z, which would normally be a bit on the early side for the peanut whistle to work EU on 40m. Yet I had a nice run of EU stations there, and signal strengths were generally good for that early. Had to ask for a lot of fills, the QSB was troublesome and I had difficulty pulling calls out of the mini-pileups.  A better op would have been nailing them more easily.

The propagation within the US seemed to be pretty good on all bands. This sort of […]

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last changed on 2011.02.20 at 20:33:30 | Category: Operating Events | Leave a comment

10m Band Still Dead

By w4kaz, created on 2011.02.14 at 12:01:37 | last changed on 2011.10.20 at 08:49:15 |

I see the solar flux ended the day Sunday over 100 for the first time since 2005.

Yet Sunday afternoon, 10m was still just as dead as a doorknob. Spent a few minutes several times hunting beacons, but only the local one here in FM05 was audible. Didn’t hear much on 15m either, but there were a few CW Q’s and some RTTY signals. One very faint SSB QSO.

Perhaps a few days of flux will help improve conditions. What with ARRL DX CW coming, that would be a welcome change.

But the whole extended propagation drought has me re-evaluating the 160m antenna versus the 10m/15m antenna. Its not necessarily an either/or, but the supports they occupy could probably be used for other things. Its probably a good time to re-evaluate the available support/actual usage trade-offs again. Most of the wires were hoisted based on what supports were unoccupied, rather than as a whole station best use plan. [ Plan? Plan?]

There’s a three week window here where the temperatures will be moderate and the leaves are not yet budding. Plan? None yet occurs.

The 10/15m loop is probably in a spot that might be better used for the 160m vertical. The 160m vertical is a bit on the long side, and the darn thing is working – kinda-sorta hate to “fix” something that works. But there’s also K2AV’s new idea for the radial/counterpoise to consider. Not sure what the real fun factor is in the situation. In the end, […]

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last changed on 2011.10.20 at 08:49:15 | Category: Antennas, Curiosities | Leave a comment