Anyone else noticing better band conditions lately? I certainly have.
If you’re a regular reader, then you know that I’m a big fan of 30-meter band. Lately, I’ve been getting great reports, and one recent evening, I made four different contacts on 30 meters, all of them with stations in Europe.
And, as I wrote recently, NASA says that Solar Cycle 25 is now officially underway. So, hopefully, we can look forward to 5 years of improving conditions.
AC2YD working the world with QRP
Back on May 25, I worked Ben, AC2YD. This was a very cool contact because I was his first QSO in 45 years! As you can see from the QSL card below, he was operating a Softrock SDR running only 2 W. I immediately sent him a QSL card, wanting mine to be his first QSL in 45 years.
I worked him again a couple of days ago, and as it turns out, Ben has been very busy with his 2 W. He reports that he’s worked 46 states and 43 DXCC entities in the less than four months that he’s been back on the air. He says that the secret of his success has been working contests. While that may be, I’m glad he took the time to have a couple of ragchews with me.
9A/W4GAL rocks a 4-element, 40-meter Yagi
Last night, Gary, 9A/W4GAL answered my first CQ on 40 meters. That’s kind of an odd call, I thought. Well, as it turns out, Gary was operating a station located in Croatia remotely from his home in Florida.
He was a solid S7 here, and when I noted that, he said that he was running only 100 W, but that the remote station antenna was a 4-element, 40-meter Yagi (see right). No wonder he had such a good signal! I joked that his antenna was doing all the heavy lifting.
As a bonus, his call spells a word, so his QSL will fit nicely into my collection of QSL cards from stations whose calls spell words. My card to him is going in the mail today.
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