It’s been two weeks since my last posting. Not a lot happened on the ham front.
I sold one of my TS-850 transceivers. I got a fair price and the buyer bought a bargain I think. I made a small test setup and he was happy. He said he owns 10 HF rigs and mine will be #11 and his second TS-850. If I decide to replace the other TS-850, I hope it’ll be as easy to get a correct price for it and sell it as fast as this one.
I found a buyer for the microHAM cable that got replaced by a K3 cable. I sold it through the RRDXA mailing list. No market for that stuff in Belgium. Another deal that pleases buyer as well as seller.
Last week (Tuesday June 24) I got home and cranked up the tower one level. With the 6m hentenna (no typo) about 15m high I was able to work a few stations in CW. First QSO was OY. Then an ON. Some EA, F, DL, G etc with modest signals. So either the hentenna is not a miraculous antenna or the 6m opening that evening was only so-so. I guess some of both. I need to get used to sending the grid square. I remember that from my VHF DX days. Before passing the CW test I only had access to VHF so exchanging locators was daily business. I must admit I don’t care about grids but of course on VHF… I don’t think I’ll get hooked on 6m soon. Magic band? I’d like to call it a tragic band to quote KH2D.
So I ended up on 30m again. A band that never lets you down. A dozen W’s and a VK. No JA though and lots of EU. The next day I woke up and found 30m empty as well as 20m. Looking outside it was clear the WX was tilting over to bad. I thought it was going to rain with T-storms. So I lowered the tower again. I didn’t make a QSO since. What I managed to do was a little bookkeeping in my logs and upload to eQSL and LotW. I really need to get that box of incoming QSL cards that has been waiting for me for almost 6 months now. I am not looking forward to sorting and processing those. It’ll be a whole lot.
Next week is IARU. WX forecast doesn’t promise nice weather to set up all the antennas on Friday. Last year was excellent WX the days before and after so I could crank up the tower and install all antennas in a relax summer pace and enjoy some DX as well. Regrets, I had a few, but then again… I’m starting to regret I blew up the PJ2 deal…