Last night, I popped down to the shack about 9:30 pm (0230Z ). I didn’t think there would be much activity on 30m, but I thought I’d check anyway. Well, the first station I heard was an OE3 station operating portable from Jamaica, and he was booming in. I worked him easily.
Then, I tuned around a bit, and hearing nothing decided to call CQ. After several calls with no replies, I checked Reverse Beacon to see if any of them were hearing me. The only hit I got was from PJ2T on Bonaire in the Caribbean. I thought that was kind of weird.
Tuning around again, I heard YV5OIE/QRP on 10.110 MHz calling CQ. I worked him with no problem. Tuning around some more, I ran across CE1/K7YA calling CQ. He was really booming in, too. Unfortunately, he either never heard me, or decided he didn’t want to work me. He was working a bunch of Europeans, though.
At any rate, I’d never encountered such strange conditions. I never heard any of the Europeans, so at my location, it seemed that the band was only open to the south. Very strange.
#occupyhamshack
There is somewhat of a movement among some of the hams on the social media networks, such as Google+ and Twitter, to be more active on the HF bands. The hashtag they’re using is #occupyhamshack. Check it out.
Ned Davis says
Looks good to me too in north ental Florida. You sent us that second hand arctic air. Froze last night and it got up to 48 today. But the intense sunlight made it all better till the sun started setting.
I know. I know. Gee, poor little us suffering so severely down here. I actually had to don my jeans and a sweatshirt today. At least we will be back in the 70’s by Wednesday. What a life!
I went to Orlando Hamcation yesterday and I was quite pleasantly surprised at the large attendence. Considerably larger than the last two years. Hopefully this a sign we are dragging ourselves out of the economic doldrums one step at a time.