Actually... you don't really care what the sun is doing over your head, you
really care what it is doing a half a hop distance away from you. The basic
rule of thumb for 10m in low sunspot periods is to aim at the sun from just
about sunrise to just after sunset, or maybe a bit later because ionization
tends to last a while after sunset.
To point out how this works, Sunday more as the sun approached from the east
first 20m opened for us with the first European at 746z (sunrise here was
1200z)... now its possible that the first couple were left over long path,
but by 1030z 20m was definitely open and running short path into Europe...
followed at 1130z by 15m working 5z, 3v, then ea, tk, and then running the
restu of Europe by 1200z, right at sunrise. It was less than an hour later
at 1250z that cr5x called us, then ea8, tk, f, and a smattering of other
southern Europeans and Africans.
Sunset was abt 2120z.. we were working carribean and south America up to
about 1845z when we were called by zl and 5w, then the band shortened up
again so we only had some carribean until about 2100z, followed by w4 to w0
until about 2200z.
David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Haavisto [mailto:kamham69@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 04:39
> To: Zack Widup
> Cc: CQ Contest
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQWW CW - 10m
>
> During the CQWW SSB, I heard one station on 15 make an interesting comment
> that is worth passing along. Once the sun is shining all day, it tends to
> ionize the atmosphere and 10 starts to come to life.
>
> Bottom line being - start checking in the afternoon - say around 1900 Z in
> NA. Opening will last several hours, and once the sun moves on, 10 is
> done
> for another day. Maybe a couple of hours this time of year...
>
> During the CQWW CW, there was some short skip on Sunday - managed to work
> some SA and Carribean (this is "normal"), but also managed to worked a
> couple of stations in NA as well. This has not been the case previously.
> Opening on Sunday was better than Saturday.
>
> Will be interesting to see how 10 is in a couple of weeks during the 10
> meter contest!
>
> Tom - VE3CX
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Zack Widup <w9sz.zack@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I wasn't active in the contest on Saturday but I only heard one station
> on
> > 10 meters during the times I listened on that band on Sunday, an LU. He
> > couldn't hear me at all. So I got no QSO's o 10 meters at all. I didn't
> > even
> > hear the usual Caribbean stations who usually come through on that band.
> >
> > 73, Zack W9SZ
> >
> >
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