Have the bands seemed better for you lately? They seem to be here. Almost daily now, I’m able to work into Europe on 30m, for example. Tonight, for example, I worked PA1CC on the first call and exchanged 559 reports with him.
I haven’t been really been keeping up on the space weather, but by some accounts Solar Cycle 25 has already started. The consensus is that cycle 25 is going to be about the same as cycle 24, that is to say mediocre, but hey, anything’s better than what we’ve had for the past couple of years.
Kayak mobile
Yesterday, after working a fellow on 40m, I got a call from Robert, NW2Z. I didn’t have a lot of time before our club Zoom meeting was going to start, so I almost didn’t reply to his call, but I’m glad that I did.
As it turns out, Robert was calling me from a small island off the coast of North Carolina. He had kayaked out to the island and set up his station, consisting of a KX-2, running about 10 W, and an end-fed antenna, The mast that you can see in the photo below is a 32-ft., telescoping fiberglass mast. He had a great signal, too, peaking at S7 here in Michigan. This morning, he sent me a couple of pictures, including this one:
Pretty cool, eh?