Canary Is and Cape Verde Is on 6m

6m opened up nicely this evening allowing two QRP SSB contacts into EA8 (EA8YT and EA8CQW) both in IL18 square. Also heard the D4C/B beacon in Cape Verde Is for the first time just hovering at the noise level for me at best.

Still below average on 6m

Just one EA worked on 6m QRP yesterday and still no further transatlantic stations heard. Conditions definitely not up to last season.

6m not as good as 2007?

Do others agree that 6m conditions have not been as good as in the 2007 season so far? This year I've only heard one transatlantic station (HI3TEJ) so far, and he was only just audible. At this point last year I'd heard several Caribbeans and USA/Canada.

Photo of Homebase10 10m antenna

This is a picture of the "Homebase10", a horizontal 10m antenna mounted on its pole above my roof. It is a wire halo which very effectively covers around 600kHz of 10m with a low SWR. It has allowed me to work plenty of stations running QRP with some contacts with just 50mW (see earlier blog post).

Homebase 10 (10m halo antenna)

This antenna is appearing in PW shortly. There is a page about it on my website. http://www.g3xbm.co.uk

Online SDR

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ is an online software defined radio which up to 50 people can use at the same time. It covers parts of 80, 40 and 20m and works really well on my little Asus EEE PC. You need both Java and JavaScript enabled for this page to work properly. Unfortunately it does not quite tune down far enough to cover the QRP calling frequencies.

Ukraine worked on 6m QRP

UR5WD in KO20NC was the best QSO on 6m QRP (5w CW on the small vertical) yesterday. He was quite weak with me on CW and I was surprised to work him, but got a 559 report. The band was open most of the day to somewhere in Europe although the opening favoured the east for me.

50mW 10m QSOs today

WPX CW contest today and 10m in great shape allowing 4 QSOs just now with just 50mW into the recently built Homebase10 wire halo antenna. These stations would have been workable at 5mW or less I believe, but I could not find a larger RF attenuator!

Worked with 50mW: DL7BY (599), DH8BQA (599), DG4R (599), EH3MM (599)

New 6m country worked

Although not super DX, I worked 9H1 this evening with 5W CW on 6m. The band was in good shape with stations from all over Europe audible and even hints of transatlantic stations (8P9 worked by a CU3 and calling CQ DX Eu).

6m and 10m lively this afternoon

10m was in good shape at 3-4pm today with plenty of EUs workable including a new country for me on the band in the form of LX1AX who gave me 55. He was running 1kW to a 9el yagi - rather out-doing my QRP and a halo! Still, a new 10m DXCC country is in the log.

6m was also open managing to work IK0FTA with 5W SSB and the vertical.