I read that last night, 6m was open to South America. I had the vertical on at the time and didn't see anything, so presumably it wasn't that strong here. People worked CE, PY, LU etc - the. usual suspects!
6m was open with Es quite early this morning into OK and it's been open most of the morning on and off.
Pleased to work G4LBJ (JO02) on 2m FT8 around lunchtime. I see Len quite often. He's a fair distance from here and like me just using a vertical. I should call him more often and see how easily we are able to complete.
Six metres got quite busy in the afternoon. Saw a comment from John G4BAO in the VHF chat about 70MHz being open. I tried a couple of aerials - the V2000, the 40/80m dipoles and the HF vertical. The HF vertical had the best match - I got a few weak decodes from OZ, SP and EA. Tried a CQ or two and was heard weakly in EA7. I'll come back to 4m over the Es season and see if anything is possible with a simple setup.
It's now 1030 local time at night and 6m is still open to the south. Incidentally, this afternoon, I saw a decode from 'XX9ET' - I assume it was someone in EU fooling around, but I guess we'll see. This evening very pleased to have a QSO with Colin G0XCF who 'came' to the Zoom talk for Appledore the other evening.
At 1009z I had a weak decode of IK3VZO (JN55) on 2m. I'd have normally put it down to meteors, which it might be, but at that same time, G3YDY in JO01 reported 2m Es to Italy.
A few OK, DL, SP stations around on 6m with the odd extended decode from 4X.
Seems like 6m was open pretty much all day, around Europe. I didn't see anything from noticeably further off, although I left the rig on the vertical.
Around 1530z I got into the shack from the garden and noticed that there had been some 2m Es to Portugal. Not a major opening, but a couple of stations from IM58/IM59.
Well, the K's 2, so let's plump for there being a bit of Es today.
Woke up to mist and the first thing I heard on the Marine receiver this morning was Falmouth Coastguard. When I got to the shack, I tried a few CQs on 2m FT8 and it was nice to be heard by GM0HBK up in IO77, so the tropo is obviously good up and down the Irish Sea this morning.
I have the Moonraker Luna 2m/70cm FM 'mobile' here for a RadCom review. Connected it up for the first time this afternoon and the first QSO was with Des EI5CD near Cork on 2m FM. It seemed to work fine, I'll obviously play with a little more. It's got two receivers and puts me in mind of an FT-8800 or similar.
Oh - and so far, no Es! So much for the earlier prediction!
Seeing the K had dropped to 2 first thing (it's 1 now), I wondered if we'd see some Es. Certainly this morning saw some quite intense Es on 6m including some quite short distances, so presumably the MUF went quite high as I was seeing stations as close as IN97 at one point. Mostly Spanish and a few French stations on 6m with CN8NS who's becoming quite a regular.
13z CWT was pretty poor to North America - couldn't work John VE3EJ! I listened for Jim K6AR, but he was obscured by loud EU signals, as was VK6T. Nice to say hello and congratulations to Doug KR2Q who was inducted into the CQ Contest Hall of Fame at Dayton last weekend.
Late afternoon I could see one or two stations working California on 6m. Nothing here. Others were working Iceland, but the TFs weren't heard here which was interesting.
19z was average to the west coast on 15m - nice to catch Jim K6AR and a couple of others. Harder going to the east coast, although VE3EJ was easy to work but AA3B and K3WW weren't huge signals. 20m was noisy and North Americans fairly weak.
Didn't make it to the shack until after Welsh class.
Doesn't look like 6m has done much today (which with the K at 4, would tie in with expectations). I can see there have been one or two decodes of French stations and similar through the day, but nothing sustained.
Heard HC8M on 15m mid afternoon but couldn't attract his attention - he didn't seem to be working many. I did work 3B9G on 17m though, which was a nice surprise.
Some 6m Es in the morning - and interesting at lunchtime. Saw EI4DQ calling W4AS for one period. Didn't hear him at all.
When I was working EA7L on the vertical, I did get a flag from NP4G at -15 which was interesting. Went onto the beam and CQed in that direction but nothing doing. A little later I did see KP4JRS calling VE2WX for one period. And that was pretty much it for the day on 6m - a few odd decodes afterwards but nothing substantial.
In the evening, I did a 'What's So Special about VHF' for the Appledore club. Hope they liked it. It was nice to see Terry G4CHD there. Terry used to teach the RAE course in Cheltenham in the early 1980s. I self-studied, but many, many amateurs in the Gloucestershire area owe their licences to Terry's tuition.
I stopped doing daily updates because I was a bit conscious I was flooding the Cloudlog feed with fairly mundane posts.
Reading the Cheltenham ARA newsletter today, Mark G4MEM very kindly mentioned that he'd been reading these posts. Thanks Mark! So, perhaps I should go back to slightly more regular updates.
Bit of a busy day and therefore not much radio activity. In the morning, it was time to write the VHF Column for PW and send it off to Don. After that, it was Bee School near Haverfordwest. An interesting afternoon, despite being stung! Ouch!
Got back and found RI0SP on 20m CW. He's in HR56 now.
Not much doing on 6m today, so far.
I've got a 'What's so special about VHF' talk for the Appledore club tomorrow. Thinking about what I could include, I wanted to develop the story about the Quansheng UV-5K on FT8. After the talk to Yorkshire Mesh the other week, I hadn't tried what Mike G5TAR did, to get the UV-5K to transmit on FT8 by setting the mode to USB (DSB) and then using the phone audio coupled (that's fancy talk for holding the phone close to the microphone and speaker of the rig!) to generate and receive the FT8. It worked just fine! Which of course has me thinking about more possibilities when operating portable!
Bit of Es into Europe this afternoon when we got back from our Welsh lesson and then noticed G0GGG working (I think) K6ZZ. That caught my attention and I spun the beam around to North America. As it turned out K6ZZ was in the EM grid (EM78?). I didn't see much from him but W9OO was around, but didn't hear me. I did work Tim WW1L though which was good. Nice to see the band opening up to the west. I should probably leave the beam over there now.
In the evening there was some decent Es around to the south - nice to see old 6M CW compatriot, CT4KQ coming through on FT8. It'll be nice to work him again after all this time - I guess we first worked in the late 1980s on 6m CW.
Around 1900z I was monitoring on the vertical on 6m and noticed WW2DX coming through strongly! Sadly he could only hear me at -20 despite being +16 - so the QSO barely made it - but interesting to see the band open again anyway.
A little bit more Es down to Italy on 6m this evening but perhaps the highlight today was working ET3AA on 17m CW for a new country. I'd heard ET3AA on 21MHz a little earlier - not too strongly but I found him on 17m with a good signal and after a few calls managed to get him in the log.
First 6m Es QSOs of the season for me today down to the south to EA and CN8.
Caught an opening to Italy on 6m in the evening - just worked a few stations remotely from Broad Haven - waiting for a pizza at the beach!
In other news, the Alpha tripped the power to the shack again today - it had been over a week since the last occurrence, so I'd hoped it was fixed! I cleaned it out a bit more thoroughly this time. This morning it tripped as I turned the band switch. I assume it was something physical moved, but it's hard to tell.
