The sunrise operating on 40/80m yesterday turned out to be a non-event. I got in the shack at 06.30z which is my sunrise to find 40m and 80m full of USA stations working ARRL Sweepstakes CW. They were quite loud so that’s a good thing on my 80m vertical. I took it down and didn’t find anything wrong. My plan is to look it over next weekend but the WX forecast predicts strong winds and rain. WW CW approaching and WX declining fast – sounds like a repeat of 2006. Oh my!
Anyway with the lower bands showing no activity for the Ukrainian DX contest I went to 20m and had some rate. Then off to 15m where I didn’t manage to get rate but got called by YC1KAF, HS0AC and 9M6XRO. I even managed to call ZM2B and log him without repeats. Great! Then it was time to do an urgent repair in the house and quit the contest with just over 500 CW QSOs. Funny: a not too serious period in a small contest using CW gives me relatively more rate and contacts than SSB in the biggest of ‘m all (CQ WW SSB).
Interesting and enjoyable reading I found through 3830: the 8P5A story in CQ WW SSB 2007.
Don’t expect any updates soon. My holiday is over and I’m back to work so the level of radio activity will be quite low the coming days (weeks?). Who’s reading al this anyway???