This is a contest that I like, but usually miss because Thanksgiving weekend is usually booked solid with other activities. But there were a couple of open hours both Saturday and Sunday evenings, so the K2 went out for another spin. RX conditions seemed good, despite a cold front and line of showers in the area. Propagation was about what is expected at the bottom of the cycle, fairly crappy.<\/p>\n
On 20m, I never heard any SP’s, and the few DL’s I could heard were very weak. Even allowing for the time of day, that was a bit unusual.<\/p>\n
There were a bunch of JA’s on 20m Saturday night, but they could not hear me on either the dipole or the 160m inv-L. They were not very strong on my poor antennas, but there was little QSB, and they were easy copy.<\/p>\n
I used the packet cluster again, since I was just dorking around. There was good copy on stuff I have not heard in a couple of years, but had trouble hearing the DL’s, and I never heard anything from Poland. Worked an F6 on 40m, but never heard any on 20m. The AL’s were S9+ just after local sunset on Sunday night, right before the JA’s started popping up on the packet cluster. Despite a ton of JA spots Sunday night, none were as easy to copy here as the hand full I heard Saturday night. Heard weak ZL’s working the west coast, but they never came up above a whisper here.<\/p>\n
The best prize was working TA5KZ. I thought his call was too cool to miss(given my own), so I hung in his pileup until I got a hole he could hear me through. He was working mostly EU stations, and I think the “W4” was a break in his rhythm, but he was able to hear me. Sweeeet! I think the last TA station I worked was on 10m, back when the sunspot number was over 100.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a contest that I like, but usually miss because Thanksgiving weekend is usually booked solid with other activities. But there were a couple of open hours both Saturday and Sunday evenings, so the K2 went out for another spin. RX conditions seemed good, despite a cold front and line of showers in the area. Propagation was about what is expected at the bottom of the cycle, fairly crappy.<\/p>\n
On 20m, I never heard any SP’s, and the few DL’s I could heard were very weak. Even allowing for the time of day, that was a bit unusual.<\/p>\n
There were a bunch of JA’s on 20m Saturday night, but they could not hear me on either the dipole or the 160m inv-L. They were not very strong on my poor antennas, but there was little QSB, and they were easy copy.<\/p>\n
I used the packet cluster again, since I was just dorking around. There was good copy on stuff I have not heard in a couple of years, but had trouble hearing the DL’s, and I never heard anything from Poland. Worked an F6 on 40m, but never heard any on 20m. The AL’s were S9+ just after local sunset on Sunday night, right before the JA’s started popping up on the packet cluster. Despite a ton of JA spots Sunday night, none were as easy to copy here as the hand full I heard Saturday night. Heard weak ZL’s working the west coast, but they never came up […]<\/p>\n