GW4VXE's Station Diary

Looks like another SOTA day on HF!

A little Es going on on 6m. Worked IW0HLE and saw a couple of other stations, but fairly weak. Nice to work Peter G8BCG this morning on 6m - some sort of scatter going on as there was a lot of 'fuzz' on the waterfall from Peter. Switched to the vertical and absolutely nothing whereas on the beam (beaming SE), Peter was +3.

Interesting mode comparison on 2m around lunchtime. Peter MW0PJE/P was out on a SOTA summit north of Swansea. I could just detect him on FM working Don GW0PLP. On SSB he was audible, just, but at 'I can't be bothered strength'! But had an easy QSO with him when he moved to 2m FT8, with signals varying between -10 and -5.

Pleased to work RI1FJL on 17m CW this afternoon after a session of beekeeping. Not too difficult to work. That was a new one on CW.

Chatting to Pete MM9SQL this evening about OscarWatch, it reminded me I hadn't tried a satellite QSO recently, so popped on a fairly high pass of RS-44. It was nice to work SV1IW and also George GI4SJQ, both on CW. Not sure I've worked Greece on a satellite before!

Tuned across 15m after finishing the satellite pass and could hear a weak PJ2/NA2U who managed to pull me out - so that was a surprise. no other CW on the band, although FT8 looked busy.