Category: Propagation

Posts that are related to propagation and conditions.

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CQwwWPXTwo weeks ago I switched on the transceiver on saturday and listen around on the bands. I couldn’t believe my ears! There where incredible conditions. 40, 20 15 and 10 where completely open! It wasn’t hard to hear there was a big contest going on. I wasn’t into the contesting lately so I had to pull out the contest calender to check which one was on. It turn out to be the CQ WW SSB contest. After I read the contest rules I started to make some contacts. I was even able to make a qso with South Africa on 10 meters! Finally I’ve got a change to test out my Antron 99 which I installed for 10 meters. It worked very nicely!
At the end of the weekend I’ve made 77 contacts in the contest. Not extremely much, but okay for me. Especially if you bare in mind that I was totally unprepared.
If these conditions are a sign of what is possible in a high sunspot cyclus, I’m gonna have a very nice 6 years to come!

I seem to be unable to convert my HRD-ADIF-log into the needed Cabrillo-format for the contestmanager. I send him the file anyway. A few days later I received an email that my log was processed! Now that’s what I call service… Thanks Bob, K3EST.

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dxwatchA few weeks ago when I was visiting France (JN24XM) the conditions where very poor. The only excitement was a few sporadic e’s on 10m.

Last night I was sitting around in the shack. Conditions where pretty good all day. But later that evening they were really picking up. Without much trouble I’ve worked 2 South America stations: NP3XF (Puerto Rico) and YV5OHM (Venezuela).
The cluster keeps coming up with all great spots. It was a really nice to enjoy it.

Just a few minutes after twelve I was able to pull myself out of the shack and into bed. With a big smile on my face!

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SkywireloopThis week I visiting my parents in Hautes Alpes, France (JN24XM) again. Last sunday evening we arrived and the next morning I did check the wire antenna’s on the roof. They were all broken due to heavy snow slidings.
After fixing the open dipole for 20 and the long wire for the other bands on the roof, I put up my famous full wave 40 meter horizontal loop behind the house.
All antenna’s are up and running again and work great.

This morning I did see some 10 meter spots on the cluster so I tuned 10 meter on my long wire. After listening for a few minutes there was a great clear and crisp signal from Henk, PA0RKS. He was CQing. I gave him a call back and as a total surprise Henk did hear me! My first QSO on the 10 meter band had happened! It must have been some sporadic E-reflection. Thanks Henk!