Weather here in Michigan is crazy, especially when the seasons turn. On Wednesday, for example, the temperature here was in the 60s. On Thursday, however, the temperature dropped to around freezing, and we got nearly six inches of snow.
The snow was the heavy, wet kind, and it coated my Cobra antenna and the support ropes. I should have taken a picture. The snow coating was about two inches in diameter.
I’m used to having to re-tune the antenna when the 450 Ω ladder line gets wet, but this was a completely different situation. I couldn’t get a good match at all. I just turned the radio off and waited until the next day when all the ice and snow had melted off the antenna.
30m DX
30m seems to be picking up after the winter doldrums. Yesterday, the band was alive with DX from Europe. The first indication of that was that DDK9, the German RTTY weather station on 10100.8 kHz was S9 here.
I worked several Europeans, including J42CPMV (Greece), F4HEC, and F6FGB. The latter actually answered my CQ. I love it when DX answers your CQ.
Working guys with homebrew rigs
One of the other contacts I made was with a guy using a homebrew rig. I answered his CQ, but then he seemed to disappear on me. I did notice a signal on the band scope about 400 Hz down the band, though. I couldn’t hear it because I had the filter set so tight. I tuned down and sure enough it was him. (Actually, that’s why the RIT is set to -0.43 in the IC-7300 screenshot above.)
After my next transmission, the same thing happened. He obviously had to re-tune his rig, so that he could hear me. I learned my lesson and left my dial right where it was.
So, I learned a couple of lessons:
- Don’t set the filters tighter than you have to. You might miss someone that’s slightly off your frequency for some reason.
- If a station disappears on you, scan the bandscope or tune around. The other station’s transmitter may have shifted frequency for any number of reasons. That’s no reason to lose a contact.
Dave New, N8SBE says
3. Tune your receiver only, via RIT. If you change your transmitter frequency too, you and the other station will ‘walk’ each other down the band.