Conditions on HF are improving. I’ve worked a couple of EU activators in the past few days on 20 m long path. The band opens around or a bit before 0600 UTC onwards for about 90 minutes. This morning 21 MHz was open to EU long path from about 2200 UTC for 90 minutes. At about 0130 I worked W1AW/0 on 28.407 short path with good signals. However no other stations copied around this time on 28 MHz. There was someone testing on 24 MHz CW - went QRT before I got the ATU set up- and at 0117 I copied KD5ZKK/P calling CQ SOTA on 20 m. Not strong but workable. He did not respond to my calls. 18 MHz yielded one summit 1300 km away on Friday.
Unfortunately I am now constrained to chasing and it will be two weeks before I can activate again. In the meantime VK is possible from a summit near you if you get the timing right. There are many of us keen to add new summits to our log.
In reply to AX3AFW:
Hi Ron,
I will be out on DL/MF-026 today from 0900 UTC. I think it’ll be too late for East Coast Australia but it just might still be be possible for VK6 (West Australia) - EU contact long path. Unfortunately as this summit needs a bit of a long and steep walk to get to, I’ll only be taking the minimum equiment with me, so it’ll just be 5w SSB from the 817 to the linked dipole but I’ve managed EU-VK before with this set-up, so here’s hoping!
I suspect I’m at least an hour too late but will give it a go in any case. So VK6 chasers please point your 20m beams to the SE when you see my spot - thanks.
In reply to DD5LP:
Hi ed,
Well 20 m was open at 0600 but 45 minutes later S55X/P was just 2x2 with an occasional lift to allow me to confirm his call. When he later went to 15 m I heard nothing from him or anyone else. After a meal break I found that at 09:25 the 20 m band was dead. I see you went QRT 30 minutes earlier.