I wonder what your experience is on the bands above 20m. Yesterday I tried 17m cw from DM/BW-091 which resulted in 1 QSO. On 12m cw no QSO
Antennas are end-fed vertical dipoles for each band which usually perform well. According to the (few) RBN spots the antennas did radiate Spots for both bands appeared on SOTAwatch. I didn’t expect the activity to be that low. Any ideas?
17m is the one band that I always try to use as it is my favourite. I find it very rare to be unable to qualify a summit.
However you do need to be aware of the propagation characteristics depending on time of year and time of day. You did not say when you tried but I am surprised you struggled with CW.
The antenna I tend to use is a end-fed 5/8 wave vertical but when travelling via air I take a very simple 1/4 wave. I usually use around 30 W on SSB but when the band is properly open, QRP works really well.
17M is my favourite band as well. I am surprised more activators do not visit there.
Your set up certainly worked when you were both on adventures abroad.
Nigh night & good luck 2016+.
Mike
We are supposed to be having a CME or equivalent at the moment, plus the fact that I plan to activate again tomorrow has probably put conditions into the doldrums already.
thanks for the replies!
I forgot to mention the time: 17m was QRV around 12:00 UTC (on 2015-12-29), 12m around 14:00 UTC.
Heard several QSOs on 17m. So the band was definitely open. With my 10 Watts the SNR in EA- and OH-Land was approx. 20 dB according to RBN. Seems that no one was interested in a QSO.
By the way: Which frequency do you use for cw? 18.086kHz?
I’ve been operating 5Z90IARU from Nairobi for the last few days, mostly using 15 metres. Up til about 16:00z yesterday (31/12/15) it was working quite nicely, though getting noisier and more prone to QSB as the day day progressed. Around 16:00z the noise got to the point where most of the DX was blanked out…
Now the old year has ended I’ll get back to using my own call…