The weather last night and today was superb, comfortably warm, with a light breeze and blue skies. Great weather for being outside playing radio.
Propagation wise it was good on Saturday until 1530 UTC, after that contacts were very hard to get as the conditions started to deteriorate. The numbers were: SFI=202, SN=197, A Index=5, and the K Index=1. However, there was very deep QSB on the bands which certainly didn't help me.
One of the issues I'm finding here in the parks around Kingston is the fact that they are so busy in the summer. I know we're a tourist town, and it's good for business if the town is busy, but it gets difficult to find a parking spot in the parks unless you're there at the crack of dawn. Because they are busy it's also difficult to put up a wire antenna, I certainly don't want a lawsuit because some person, not watching where they're going, tripped over my radials or coax.
As my regular readers will know, my go-to antennas - for a long time - has been hamsticks, mounted on my truck's roof with a 5" mag-mount. I'm always surprised at how well they do, especially with 10w SSB. Last night, for a change, I dug out my Slidewinder coil with the 9.5' Buddipole whip, and used that. While it makes changing bands very easy, and it works very well, I didn't notice any significant improvement over my hamsticks.
We'll see how they do tomorrow....if the bands are usable again.
Stay Safe Out There!!
I had the same experiences with Support Your Parks weekend, but I started later in the day on Saturday and really struggled to get my 10 QSOs. I was in a 3fer location using my QMX radio. The parks are very busy at this time of year and, as you said, that limits antenna choices. My QMX is the low band version so I couldn't go above 20m. Although it's an amazing little rig it was frustrating not to be able to move up to 17m or 15m where there was better propagation.
ReplyDeleteHi John, it was still difficult to make contacts on Sunday as well. The QSB was very bad and signals disappeared as fast as they appeared. I didn't realize you're a blogger, I'll add a link to your blog from here.
ReplyDelete73,
Bill VE3FI