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.

Some life on 10m tonight

10m was open earlier this evening to ZD7X. I was unable to hear him when I got on but did work EA and EA6 on QRP SSB.

Inter-G 10m DXing

Some years ago the RSGB arranged some evening 10m activity periods during a quiet part of the sunspot cycle. It was fascinating to see how far one could work on 10m around the country even with QRP SSB/CW. Contacts from here in East Cambridgeshire regularly extended to as far away as Yorkshire even with just a sloping wire dipole or CB half-wave antenna only. Contacts were often right on the edge and CW helped. I would be happy to try skeds with others in the UK on any mode on 10m although I can only run 10w maximum. I have long thought the 10m band is much under-used for local and semi-local QSOs. It is a pity there is now less 10FM activity around 29.6MHz apart from when the band is open for DX.