The Weekend...

What an awful weekend on the bands.....especially 10m.  The ARRL 10m Contest was a dismal affair this year, with absolute garbage propagation to contend with.

I did manage to put two VE6 SOTA Summits in my log on 20m, and I made a number of local contacts on 80m.

However, 10m just wasn't there.  I had no responses to any of my CQ's and I heard no SSB stations at all.  There were a couple of CW stations down on the bottom end of the band but they were sending way too fast for me to read.  So that was it...a total bust.

The RAC Winter Contest takes place on December 28th.  One can only hope the propagation improves a great deal before then.....and pigs may fly as well 😎

ARRL 10m Contest

I'm looking forward to this weekends ARRL 10m Contest, and I'm hoping the propagation is good enough to make a serious attempt at it, at the very least I want to better my score from last year.

Looking at this weekends weather forecast, it looks like a good one to stay indoors and get on the radio.

Rules can be found HERE.

I'm thinking about doing a mixed mode (SSB & CW) QRP entry, using the new KX3.  Not sure my CW is up to speed though, but you have to bite the bullet and just dive in.

See you guys on the bands.

Coming Soon...

Planning on taking part in Winter Field Day, January 25th & 26th, 2020 ??

If you are, plot your location on this map located HERE, so far there is only one Canadian location shown....I'm sure there will be more, but let's get Canada on the map !!

The Rules for the event can be found HERE.

If you're planning on taking part in the outdoor category, you need to play it safe and start brushing up on your winter safety skills.  Don't take a chance, be safe.

First Snow...

Well, it arrived early this year, in fact it's a lot earlier than normal.....winter is still 5 weeks away!!! We're all hoping it doesn't stick around, otherwise it will start to get too cold and wet outside for our portable operating sessions.

The Winter Field Day website states: "Don't let the winter doldrums keep you locked up in the house, get out and play some radio!"  I can tell you that I have now reached the age were I long for a 8 week winter DXpedition to Fiji or perhaps Tahiti......but that's not going to happen.  Instead we'll suck up the winter crap and radio on.

This year Winter Field Day is being held on January 25th & 26th, 2020.  Mark it on your calendars, it's always a good time....even if it is cold.

In Remembrance

In Loving Memory

of the 

Officers, NCO's, and Men

of

2816 Squadron, RAF Regiment

December 1941 - June 1946

True Words ....

Comments

Just a quick note to inform my readers that I have had to limit comments to users with Google Accounts.  I did not want to have to do this, BUT.....there's always a BUT....it's the only way I can stop the constant spamming of the comments section.

On the average day I was receiving up to 200 comments from European porn sites and it was a real pain stopping them before they went live on the Blog.

So, for a little bit of an inconvenience, I now do not have to check the Blog every 30 minutes to make sure some pervert hasn't spammed me and filled the inbox with some form of porn.

Thanks for your understanding!!

The Weekend...

This years edition of the CW WW SSB Contest is now over, and from what I have seen of some already submitted scores, you either had propagation or you didn't.

Due to some medical stuff going on we called off the mini-DXpedition to the QTH of VE9FI, where we have operated from for the past two years, and stayed close to home.

The propagation numbers were not very promising, the SFI=67, SN=0, A Index=18 and the K Index=3.  These numbers, unfortunately, stayed pretty stable for the whole weekend.

I managed to make contacts on all bands except 10m.  I even managed to make three contacts on 160m with my 80m OCF Dipole, which has very obviously stretched!!  But, this was the weekend I wanted to try out my new 35.5' vertical on 15m, and it certainly didn't disappoint me.

Amongst many others, I put HH2AA (Haiti), FY5KE (French Guiana), TM6M (France), PJ4K (Bonaire), and 5K0K (San Andres & Providencia) in the log, all worked on 15m, so I have nothing to complain about its performance.  I still plan on putting more radials down before the snow flies, and then it should just be about perfect for my use.

For the most part the bands were extremely noisy with very deep QSB.  Signals were S9+ and a second later were gone completely only to reappear a few seconds later as S4.  Lots of stations had big signals, obviously running a bit of power, but they were not hearing the stations calling them, they were completely deaf, and this led to more than a bit of frustration for the S&P guys.

The other thing that was going on was stations were rushing their callsigns so fast you couldn't understand them at all.  Then to top that off, they didn't leave enough room in-between their calls for you to sneak in your callsign.  It was rush, rush, rush, and in the end nobody won. Slow down so people can understand you and answer your CQ - then everyone will be happy.

The prize for the loudest and cleanest signal this year must go to ZF1A (Cayman Islands).  What a signal they had!  I think I worked them on three bands, and everyone was a joy to work, and very professional operators as well.

So that's it for another year.  Hopefully next year we will be back down with VE9FI operating with much better propagation.