20m Band Flatters to Deceive!

Band conditons and Great Orme activation, very short report. Thursday 19/05/2016

Having to go to work in Llandudno North Wales, this morning, I took the opportunity to activate Great Orme GW/NW-070. This meant an alarm call at stupid 'o clock…

It took a little under two hours to complete the journey to Llandudno and I was QRV at 0523z. Unfortunately, my CQ’s went unanswered fo the best part of 20 minutes :frowning: Then, there was a run of 7 East Europeans, before Steve VK7CW called in at 0557z. Steve was in and out of the QSB, nevertheless, signal reports were exchanged.

More Europeans were making the log, however, the regular chasers signals were way down. Next bit of DX was Paul VK5PAS and he was followed straight in by Dov 4Z4DX in Israel.

Then it was the turn of Walter 9G5SW from Ghana, with an armchair copy, followed by a call from Gerry VE8GER in the rare Canadian Northwest Territories province, at 0709z of all times!!

Gerry stuck me on the cluster, however, things were really slow with very little interest in my CQ’s. After about 10 minutes and just out of curiosity, I called Gerry to see if he was still listening. He came straight back with a nice 5/9. We spent the next 10 minutes rag-chewing, before I had to go to work.

My log for this activation certainly flatters to decieve, the 20m band was very hard work, with just 35 contacts logged as a result of 2 hours calling.

Mike
2E0YYY

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