The Bands...

It was a nice day here, 22C (76F) under a nice blue sky. It's amazing that some of the trees are starting to show colour as their leaves start to turn.

I went back out to Parrott's Bay, CA-5142, this morning, and took almost 90 minutes to make 10 contacts. It was brutal. 

Propagation numbers were: SFI=117, SN=83, A Index=6, and the K Index=1. QSB was bad. Seven CW stations made it in the log as did 3 SSB. Both 20m and 40m was used, and 17m and 15m were both tried, but  offered no contacts in either mode.

I'm now sitting at 20,000 POTA QSO's in my log, and 986 parks activated. I'd like to make it to 1000 parks, but given the political BS stunt pulled by the POTA Board in the last few days, I'm going to have to give it a bit of thought about continuing. 

It's a bit of a quandary really. Other than POTA there's VEFF, I did that for a while, but the organization leaves a lot to be desired, especially at the very top....the rest of the volunteers are fantastic and very capable. SOTA is a "no go" as there are no accessible SOTA summits for hundreds of km in any direction. There is a solitary HEMA Summit near by, but I've already activated that this year.

There are no beaches to activate around here. BOTA, "Bunkers on the Air" is a joke, and not worth the effort. This leaves TOTA, "Tiles on the Air", an interesting idea that merits looking at.

My thoughts today go out to Larry, F5PYI, who chose the high road and resigned, after years of hard work putting the French POTA sites on the map. Bonne chance et garde le sourer, mon ami. 

Here's todays pitiful contact map:

Stay Safe Out There!