Jeff quit at the right time. The bands pretty much went to pot around
23 UTC Saturday. Before that, they had been better than last year
except for 10 meters which saw some South American activity last year
and there was none heard this year from anywhere. Skip was very short
on 20 and 15 although Kent, AE4Y, was not nearly as strong as Jeff. I
guess Jeff was about twice as far away. Last year, 20 meters was open
to Europe all night and it was open only to the Americas and the South
Pacific when I went to bed about 1:45 AM Sunday. Got back on for the
last 45 minutes or so and 15 was almost dead and there wasn't a lot of
activity on 20. The biggest disappointment was 40. Last year with a
much worse antenna, I worked a lot of stations on 40 and many were in
Europe. This year, there were a few loud Europeans workable (plus one
who couldn't hear anybody in the US, IM0I) and a few stations in the
Americas on CW. In the IARU RS, Jeff and I worked a lot of stations on
SSB on 40 with low power here with the new antenna, but I heard no
European stations working on 40 SSB. I did get DL5AWI on 80 along with
some US and VE stations. Biggest disappointment there was that CS5C had
a great signal, but couldn't hear anybody stateside. QRN was quite bad
on 80.
On another note, CY9A (1825) and OA4WW (1826) were quite loud on 160
last night around 0130 UTC. I tried both of them without success with
the new wire antenna, which loads quite nicely, but may be a big dummy
load as I have had no QSOs with it. Should have changed to the 80 meter
dipole loaded as an end fed wire which I have used on 160 for years.
But, was beguiled by how well the new wire receives. Maybe I should use
the 80 M for transmit and connect the new wire to the receiving antenna
post. Need to get a report on those two antennas and make some decision
before the NAQP on Saturday.
My IOTA totals are:
Band CW QSOs CW Mults Ph QSOS Ph Mults
80 6 1 0 0
40 59 17 0 0
20 261 54 164 40
15 92 18 28 9
10 0 0 0 0
ALL 418 90 192 49 = 572,958.
Ky QSO Party:
80 3 0
40 9 2
20 5 1
ALL 19 3 x 13 mults = 533.
Flight of the Bumblebees QRP:
40 4
20 65
ALL 69 x 141 (47 BB x 3) = 9,729.
Hope everyone has a nice week. Thanks to Jeff for putting rare Jekyll
Island on the map.
73,
John, K4BAI.
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