Crappy Bands.....

Not a very good day yesterday on the bands for the IARU HF World Championships, they were very noisy and the QSB was also pretty bad at times.

At 1249 UTC the propagation numbers were SFI=81, SN=25, the 'A' Index=5, and the 'K' Index=1.  Not too bad numbers for this stage of the solar cycle, but they didn't translate into contacts.

There were a few surprises however.  I decided to start on 15m, which hasn't been very active for  months, but my first contact was with CR6K in Portugal and was closely followed by PP5BZ in Brazil.  Both these contacts were made using my 148' inverted L long-wire antenna.  I made a few more 15m contacts before moving to 20m.

There seemed to be a lot of EU stations running a lot of power, they had some great signals at this QTH, but they couldn't hear anyone going back to them.  People need to remember that the "power" is in your good antennas, and if you can't hear them - you can't work them.

I did manage to put a new one in the log in the late afternoon, 4U1WB, the UN World Bank station from Washington, DC....not really DX, but a new one nonetheless.

W1SYE also made it into my logbook, they were located on Nashawena Island, and were taking part in a first activation of the island for the US Islands Award, so I could resist helping them out with a contact.  The island is MA-002.

Nashawena Island

Saturday ended with 32 contacts in the log, not a very good day, but.......given the state of this solar cycle, I bet the next few years will be even worse, so enjoy it while we can....