Saturday 14 December 2013

ARRL 10m Contest

Great day on 10m today for the contest!  The band was wide open into Europe this morning with many call signs all calling "CQ NA".  I must have worked over 70 European stations and really enjoyed myself.

In the afternoon 10m swung to work North-South and we started to hear the Caribbean and South American stations.  I managed to work V55V in Namibia, and got him on the first call.....which was totally unexpected given the pileup he was working at the time. 

About 1600 local the band changed again.  This time it was working well in all directions and I managed to work KH6LC in Hawaii.  Not too bad for a SFI of 164.  A SN of 141.  The 'A' Index at 16 and the 'K' Index at 4, and the band noise was going from bad to worse. 

It looks like we are in for some minor geomagnetic activity over the next 24 hours, and at 1920 local the Solar Wind is at 400+ Km/s.

There are still some of the big guns calling CQ on the band but it's almost impossible to work them now.  I doubt we will have the fun we had today in the morning, but we can hope!!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had fun... The FT950 or the IC703?

    73bob

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    1. Bob, The bands were not good enough for the IC-703, so I went with the FT-950. I had a hard time today making some contacts with 100w behind me, wouldn't have made it at all with 5w :-)

      73, Bill

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