I note with interest that we have seen some E’s over the last week or so.There has been activity on both 10 and 6m. Looking at the maps shows there has been some DX, however, it’s still pretty thin on the ground.
At times such as these, I like to drag the Antron-99 up a summit and play about on the 10m band …especially FM.
For Activators who have never tried the FM part of 10 Metres, amazing results with great audio quality can be achieved with QRP power. A couple of days ago, I came across this recording made by EW2ABC in Belarus, about a year ago. I can’t remember what power I was working with, maybe 10 or 15 Watts.
Without wishing to state the obvious, working FM requires a decent battery. For example, I wouldn’t recommend borrowing a 10 year old 7Ah SLAB out of aunty Flo’s stairlift for this type of activation. With a good antenna and some E’s, getting into North America on 10m FM can be fairly routine from a summit with a half decent take-off. Have a look around 29.200 for FM, although, this seems to close to the centre of Russian taxi activity.
Have fun.
Mike
2E0YYY