Thursday, May 2, 2013

Poor conditons but still worked a few..............

Throughout the day yesterday I was getting propagation updates on my Iphone, things were not looking to good. The decision was made to work on my Elecraft K2 build and not get frustrated with poor propagation conditions. After about 20 minutes of working on the K2 I just was not getting into. Putting the project down for the evening I flipped on the K3 just to check out the band conditions. One of my handy tools for doing that is the Elecraft P3. It's great for seeing the general condition of a particular band. It seemed that 20 meters was not doing to badly considering the conditions. The first station I ran across was H70ORO from Nicaragua. His signal was rather strong considering my attic dipole does not seem to favour Central or South America. His code speed was a comfortable 20 wpm and really not much of a pileup. I made contact with only 1 watt which gave me 2,190 miles per watt contact.
The next (and final) station I contacted was EA4DRV, being pumped from my last 1 watt contact I tried working this Spanish station with 1 watt. It didn't work out as well and the contact was made eventually with 3 watts. After this contact it was time to flip the switch once again and move on to making lunches, arranging morning work clothes and all that other fun stuff.  It goes to show you that even when the propagation is in the dumpers contacts are still there to be had!

4 comments:

Jspiker said...

Hello Mike,

You do an incredible job with you QRPp contacts!

Yesterday was tuff....the worst condition I remember in a long time. I'm desperately trying to get another station today; which will make my 100th day of DX.

It's really hit and miss here, and if not for the Caribbeans stations; I don't think I can work Europe.

Dick said...

well done, mike. i worked a station in, shall i say, near asiatic russia. me 2w, he 1w. can be done.

VE9KK said...

Good evening John, well I hope you get the 100th contact today...that would be very cool!!
Mike

VE9KK said...

Good evening Dick, very nice work with 2 watts and considering the propagation conditions that is an excellent contact.
Mike