Mark,
I know what you mean about 8 foot ground rods. I bought a hammer drill from
Harbor Freight and use it to drive the ground rods now. Piece of cake.
They are on sale quite often. Harbor Freight has sales quite often,
actually
all the time, hihi.
Bob
K6UJ
On 10/22/16 7:12 AM, Mark K3MSB wrote:
There's a lot of truth in what Jorge says. At 2 AM EDT (The timestamp
of Don's post) I'm in the sack unless 160 has been open the evening before
into EU, in which case I'll play radio until the SR line crosses into the
Atlantic. When I get up at night to hit the head I typically check the
spots for 160 and 80. if something's on I'll get on the radio, otherwise
it's back to bed.
It's similar to 10M AM. Over the years I've listened and listened and
heard nobody. I'll make one or two CQs and have several stations call me.
Yes the higher bands have been good the past week or so. There have been
some great openings into the SW pacific on 17M, and I did managed to work
5H on 12M the other day. I'm just running a CFZ and the boys with the
beams were doing better than I was.
I'll be in the stew tonight, but since mowing season is not done here, I
only have one radial rolled out under the INV-L and the BOG is not up yet
(fortunately the ground rods are pounded in...... I hate 8 foot ground
rods..... thankfully my son helped with the pounding).
73 Mark K3MSB
On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Herbert Schoenbohm <herbs@vitelcom.net>
wrote:
On six meters here at FK77 it was hot to SA with over 200 PY, LU, CX, ZP,
and CE contacts a few days ago. Many stations were well over S-9
On 10/22/2016 9:21 AM, Art Snapper wrote:
Conditions here in Michigan on 80/160 were poor last night. The signals
were weak and band noise was high. I managed to work Mali on 40, and
Hungary on 80, but it was a battle. South America was extremely poor on 80
for some reason.
Art NK8X
On Oct 22, 2016 2:03 AM, "Donald Chester" <k4kyv@hotmail.com> wrote:
Here it is Friday night, with relatively little QRN, but only a couple of
signals are audible across the entire 160m band. 80/75m has a few more
signals than that, but it's sparsely occupied as well. Usually by this
late in the season one will hear plenty of activity in the evening,
especially on weekends. I have noticed this dearth of activity for
several
weeks now; it's as if this year's radio season hasn't got off the ground
yet, despite the fact that we are almost midway through autumn and the
summer QRN has substantially subsided.
Is this a trend, and is this becoming the new normal? They keep telling
us we now have a record number of hams in the FCC data base, over
700,000.
Those hams certainly aren't on the air, at least not on 160, 80 or 40m.
I
can remember not that many years ago when at this stage in the season
on a
quiet weekend night one had to scout around to find a clear spot to call
CQ. So far this year, the bands have all had vast swathes of unused
frequencies, but the signals that are heard appear to be at normal
strength, so the bands apparently aren't dead.
Don k4kyv
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