Another day in the park, and another day of bad bands and deep QSB. The propagation numbers today were SFI=173, SN=154, A Index=10, and the K Index=3. The good news is that it was blue skies, sunny, and 22C, which certainly made up for those cold activations I did last winter.
Today was probably a good example of when not to use QRP power levels, but I still managed to have a successful activation, it just took longer. As usual I was running 10w with my KX3, and hamsticks for my antennas. There was no room at the activation site to set up a EFHW or a dipole.
It took me over an hour today to make 16 contacts, my slowest day ever...so far. The QSB on 20m and 40m was terrible, quite possibly the worst I've heard it this year. S9 stations disappeared in nano-seconds...never to be heard from again.
I only managed to get 2 contacts on 40m, and they were both local. I must have called on 40m for 20 minutes with no luck before I moved to 20m which turned out to be a bit better, but you still had to work to get the contacts.
It's a long weekend here in Canada, so hopefully the bands will improve so we can enjoy ourselves!
Here's todays QSO map:
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