Today was a quiet day around the house, so I decided to get out to a park and do an activation. It's been a week since I have managed to escape and play radio. Way too much going on around here during the summer months for my liking.
Parrotts Bay was my go-to park today, I thought it would be cooler down by the lake, but In was wrong. The 30C (90F) temperature was a killer with no wind to help cool things down. It was also extremely busy with people parking there and crossing the road to go swimming in Lake Ontario.
Propagation today was: SFI=139, SN=155, A Index=23, and the K Index=1. The band noise and deep QSB were brutal and I'm sure they cost me some contacts. Today's activation was a mixture of CW and SSB on both 20m and 40m. Neither band was very good.
Radio today was my KX3, and I used my JPC-12 vertical antenna with the new 40m coil. It seems to work fine, it's certainly no worse than a ham stick. After an hour I packed up with 12 contacts in the log.
I wonder how long it will be before the sun settles down, the bands open up, and the DX re-appears?
Here's todays contact map: