Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023
Its been a period of some decent radioactivity for the Zed Man and Ye Olde Radio Shack.
I’ve been trying to get to the shack by 8 p.m., giving me an hour of time to check 10 meters and 6 meters for activity.
Last night I worked well well-known DX’er and contestor David, XE1XR. He was a solid 59 signal and the only signal on the band from 28.3 to 28.6 MHz. I religiously check the CW subband for beacon activity, and there have been a number of nights when I’ve copied decent beacon signals from 5-land, but with no phone activity anywhere.
Last night I copied two XE1 beacons, neither of which I recall hearing before. I knew the band was open to Mexico, the question would be if anyone would be on phone. David was the only one I found, and I suspect it was grayline propagation or simply just improving sunspot numbers. We’ve had some numbers topping 150 of late.
A few days back when the sunspots were percolating, I copied a couple of ZL’s. I tried to call the loudest one, but my 100 watts to a wire dipole was not going to be heard easily among the crowd of western U.S. stations he was hearing.
Last night after my CW traffic net, I returned to tune the 10-meter CW band, and heard — of all things — W1AW’s CW bulletin transmission, quite loud with minor QSB. That was another first for me — I don’t recall EVER copying W!AW CW on 10!
VERTICAL ON SIX? Two years ago (!) when I bought my new (and still unboxed!!) Yaesu FTDX-101MP, I also bought a good 6 Meter vertical as well as a dual-band VHF/UHF vertical. Both are like the Yaesu HF rig and still in their respective boxes.
My plan was to replace the homebrew 6-meter copper J-pole with the commercial antenna; I just haven’t done so. With the resurgence of sunspots and the e-skip season later this year, there will be activity worth working on 6 again.
The vertical isn’t going to break a pile up, but it will be more efficient than my 150-foot multi-band HF inverted vee!
I enjoy checking in on the Georgia CW net, but I’m finding the hunt for 10 meter activity a blast too, and its truly a blast from the past. In 1988, I had “Old Ironsides,” the Hallicrafters SR-150 that I was using on HF, and I scoured the 28.3-28.5 Novice phone subband for signals. And I can never forget the thrill of hearing West Coast stations breaking through the static as summer e-skip season arrived. Ironsides was putting out about 30 watts on phone, so I’m thankful for those early contacts who listened closely for my peanut whistle station!
73 es GUD DX …. de KY4Z … SK …. SK ….. (dit dit) …