Tis that time of year, already. The HF / VHF / UHF, and even microwave, HAM bands will be going absolutely nuts. [
www.arrl.org] Of course, if you want to get away from that, there's the WARC bands, 60M, and 2M National Simplex. Me??? I like to use the contest as a gauge to see how well my station gets out there, or doesn't.
UPDATE 6/24/2023: I didn't get on the bands until midnight. Waited for an early evening storm to pass, before we fired-up the grill for BBQ chicken. 75M was rough, with lightning crashes tearing that up, even with Attenuators. Also, rough on 40M, and could still hear crackles on 20M and even 15M. 10M and 6M, dead... Still, any station that I heard on attenuated S-Units strength I was able to nab on 1st tries with 65W. 40M seemed harder to do so, with station getting lots of pile-ups. I even worked the local club, at the new location set-up, from Liberty, WV on 7270kHz. Worked a few West Coast and "5"-land stations on 20M. And, heard no one on 15M, but still lightning crackles there. (Huh...) Worked that, until 3AM, here. When I got-up, there was a weak 10M "E" opening to Arkansas, but was only able to work a couple of stations there, until it seemed to take a dump at noon, here. Heard something quick on 50.200MHz, but no repeat. Someone tuning up??? Hey... That's the contester's Murphy's Law, the propagation sucks, until after the contest.
Anyway, this tells me that at modest 'barefoot' power that I can still get-out and work 'em. So, a nice gauge. And, I'm working on a battery powered system to work the power sipper Xiegu G90 rig. The power sippers that I have for VHF / UHF are HT's to outdoor antennas. You can do a lot with 5W.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2023 07:46PM by ThaDood.
