No goals to acheive for this one, just some fun spinning around the bands.
I am sorry I missed operating on Friday night. Saturday night turned up a lot of EU countries on 80m. I’m sure there are a few new ones, since I’ve seldom really worked 80m as seriously as I did Saturday. The side effect was neglecting 40m, as well as missing out on Friday evening.
Started in the late afternoon Saturday on 20m. After the first 15 or so S&P Q’s, I found the NY4A ops and parked to read their mail around 19:50z. It’s probably the easiest way to get a good idea about propagagtion, because Howie has a great signal into EU. Normally, I hear only every third or fourth station, sometimes less.
But Saturday was different. The 100w EU stations had good signal strength, and over a 10 to 15 minute period I was hearing almost everything the NY4A op was working. Hmmmmm.
Sliding up the band, I found a hole around 14081 to try running. I had a nice 40 minute run, then the floor seemed to drop out. The run rate wasn’t fantastic, but it was better than S&P, and it was good run practice. Logged 35 Q’s, mostly northern EU. Later on, there was a JA on 14023 who was about 559 here in central NC. He had a huge pileup, and could not hear the tin whistle from the KazShack. Seemed to be working the Left coast and stations in the Black Hole. I never found any AK stations. A quick spin across 20m at 0100Z turned up KH7S. At that time, he was the only station I was hearing, but he was solid copy. It seems likely that his copy on W4KAZ was somewhat less robust.
Getting a run going on 40m and 80m was just not accomplished. QSB was a problem on 80m. A G4 that called in on a run gave up on it. The QSB got the suffix of his call every time. But for the time I had available, the S&P was fun. I didn’t turn on the packet, so it was fun hunting the pearls. I don’t know how conditions seemed to the big guns, but it was quiet here. Propagation seemed pretty good on 20/40/80. 160m was quiet too, and I was able to work several of the Carribean stations. Did not stay up late enough to try to get the EU sunrise.
The Good: 20m condtions seemed slightly better than they have been, but still nothing fantastic. Working KH7. New DX on 80m. 160m antenna seems to get enough signal out to at least be heard.
The Bad: Missed operating on Friday night. Unable to establish a run on 80m. Insufficient patience for running at a slow rate.
The Ugly: Flubbed exchanges.
To Fix: Mostly the lid operator. 😮
Summary: Band QSOs Mults ------------------- 160: 5 5 80: 53 34 40: 40 22 20: 95 39 15: 13 8 10: 0 0 ------------------- Total: 207 108 Total Score = 66,744
Station:
- Elecraft K2, WriteLog logging
- 80m dipole @ 50 ft, N/S
- 40m dipole @ 45ft, NE/SW
- 20m dipole @ 50ft, E/W
- 160m Inv-L with 20 very short radials
- K9AY RX antenna
15 meters was *really* cooking for the first time in years. Not just open to the Caribbean and South America (wow, I had NEVER heard so many PY’s at the same time), but I had no problem working the big guns in Europe on 15M too. So a signifigant achievement was working Europe for the first time in many years on 15M.
80M seemed less… constipated than before. There were many big-gun European stations who not only couldn’t hear me, but also couldn’t hear other big-gun US East Coast stations trying to call them. I don’t get this part, it happens every single contest.
Tim N3QE
I missed any 15m opening to EU. Just Caribbean and Brazil. But there have been a few contests recently where even those guys were hard to find.
73 de w4kaz
On 15M, my limited antenna (just a wire doublet) could receive and work the big guns from Europe but I couldn’t hear the little guys from Europe.
But I heard some bleedover from my local big-gun, W3LPL, and he was working a lot of smaller stations in Europe on 15M that I simply couldn’t hear. Of course his tower farm is enormous!
Oh yeah, Hawaii on 15M was nice too. KH6LC was coming in clear as a bell.
On Sunday morning, 40M and 80M were very nicely open to Australia and New Zealand. Not sure if you got any of that. I’m always astonished at how reliably this is open to guys like me and the Australians with just 100W and wire antennas.
For me, for some reason, Japan is always really really hard and about the only time I ever work them is in a contest. I got several JA’s on 20M. I could hear others on the East Coast working JA on 40M but couldn’t hear the JA stations myself.
Score-wise, my working the JA’s was not the best use of time. Looking at my logs I had to call them for 15 minutes or so before I got through, I could’ve done better by working just about anywhere else. But I only get a couple JA’s a year and they’re all in contests and it’s a tradition for me to try, try, try, and eventually get through.
There did seem to be fewer brutal pile-ups this year.