I’m sitting in the shack with the antennas disconnected while Mother Nature participates in a light show and bowling match outside. Heavy, heavy rain and lots of lightning and thunder. Flash flood warnings and the whole enchilada! Been HOT and HUMID, too.
The space weather has been pretty unsettled today, as well. I’ve checked the bands several times today and haven’t been at all impressed. It has been a dismal day, propagation-wise. QRN has been high.
The rain is supposed be with us, on and off, through Sunday … seems like it’s always a weekend thing, doesn’t it? The forecast for next weekend is a chance of rain again for what a forecast that far out is worth. We’ll see.
It was a good evening on the bands. I had FT-8 contacts on 80 through 10 meters … even picked up two new countries. Sixty meters was busy, and I had a Jamaican CW QSO on 40 meters.
In my guise as a public safety radio professional, I spent the day listening to a sales/technical representative from JPS Interoperability Solutions tell us all about their products. They offer ways to tie together disparate communications equipment (UHF, VHF, landline, cellular, , HF, trunked, analog, digital, video …). You name it, they can make it talk together. I’ve used their equipment over the years, and they build good stuff! I even have a JPS NRF-7 here in the shack, which was an early product for the Amateur market. It’s an audio dsp unit, and still holds its own, even after many years.
I bought a copy of Stu, KB1HQS’s new book, Portable Operating for Amateur Radio, and hope to get a chance to read it this weekend. I’ve followed his blog online for a while, and enjoy reading what he has to share. It’s $9.95 for the Kindle edition on Amazon ($19.95 for the softcover). I prefer the Kindle editions. Not only do you get them pretty much instantly, but they’re a considerable savings over the physical book. You don’t need a Kindle to read them. You can download a free app for your computer or phone.
I worked quite a few stations on FT-8 earlier this evening, around 1900Z … North America, South America, and Europe. From there, it’s been downhill. Not much going on with CW or digital modes now (2400Z/2000 EDT). Forty and eighty are pretty crappy, too, with high noise levels here at my QTH tonight. Ah, well …. there’s always tomorrow! Sure is different than this past weekend!
This weekend was the CQ WW WPX Test, CW. As you can see, the bands were pretty busy …
20 Meter Band on Saturday40 Meter Band, 45 minutes prior to end of the contest.
Imagine if it was like that every day!
I dabbled a bit and worked 80-some stations over the two days. I also took breaks and worked a few FT-8 contacts, too. Not in it seriously, but just keeping my CW hand in.
This was the first time I’ve hit the CW heavily with the IC-7300 in a major contest, though, and I’m really impressed. It is a real pleasure to work CW with this rig. I never experienced any overload, even though the bands were booming. The filters are superb, and I could pull out just about any station I tried. Judicious use of the RF gain is the secret!
The only problem that I didn’t resolve was with the N1MM+ logger … I could not get the Telnet working for the packet cluster. It worked the last time I used it … not this time though. Telnet works fine with SpotCollecter in DXLab, so I dunno?
An observation … although they were there, the 50 wpm ops seemed to be fewer. There were lots more stations sending at an easily copyable 25 – 30 wpm.
There were good signals on 80 through 10 this weekend. I checked six meters several times, but if there was an opening, I missed it. Not only good signals, but some good ops, too. It was a pleasure to participate.
My setup was the IC-7300 with 31-foot homebrew vertical and an LDG AT-100ProII tuner. Nothing special. I was hearing North America and South America and the Caribbean pretty well, but Europe was pretty sparse, propagation-wise (for me). Nothing at all out of Asia or Africa.
There was some pretty violent wind, rain, and lightning on Saturday night, but I’d already pulled the switch and gone to bed. Didn’t bother me a bit.
So … now the contest is over, and the bands are back to normal. See the picture above? I just checked, ten minutes after the end of the contest, and there are only five or six CW signals visible on my 40-meter spectrum scope … . What a difference forty-five minutes makes!
Field day is coming up next month. I guess that’ll be the next big thing I’m involved with. I’m looking forward to it!
The bands have been pretty crummy lately. Nothing of interest is being heard at my QTH. Consequently, my activity is way down, and I’ve just been cleaning up an sorting things out in the shack.
One thing has been good though … and it has absolutely NOTHING to do with ham radio … McDonalds Quarter-Pounder. I tried one of the new fresh beef, cooked-to-order burgers, and was really impressed. I think Wendys still has the edge, but the taste and juiciness of the new quarter pounder was a big improvement over its predecessor. It tastes GOOD … not like dry cardboard! Try one … I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
