Monday, June 3, 2013

Times R a changing

Times R a changing with the way the sun is preforming these days. I know we have all wanted the sunspots to go up along with the flux numbers......BUT..........what is up with the solar flares!!! As a wise man once told me with the good comes the bad as well.  Sunday afternoon I fired up DXlabs and on the cluster was S573DX from Slovenia. He was booming in at around S7 to S9 and I had my K3 at around 5 watts and so began my effort to contact him. There was a pileup and as it goes with QRP you have to let the big guns get their turn and then you can fit your call in the cracks! I was waiting for my
Back to the K2 build
opportunity (mind you I still was throwing in my call along side the "big guns"...you never know) and then S573DX went from S7-S9 so S...NOTHING!! In the blink of an eye he was just above the noise level even the APF was not able to dig him out of the noise floor. So goes the conditions when the sun grumpy! There are other projects around the shack to keep me busy...such as my K2 build. There was not much time for radio this week as Julie has relivitves coming in from England next weekend. They will be staying with us for 3 weeks so it was time to get some rooms ready for them and do some needed house cleaning as well.

2 comments:

Jspiker said...

Hello Mike,

I know exactly what you mean! In the blink of an eye....well it's almost that quick! I thought it was gray line but that's not the case.

Talked to guy in West Virginia the other day who was running 700 watts (on 17 meters) an within a couple of minutes, he vanished.

VE9KK said...

Good evening John,I hope your back is feeling better these days. Well it's nice to know that I am not alone out there when stations just fall off the waterfall.
Mike