Thanks Jackie, I'll give it a whirl.

"Jackie" wrote in message
news:Lci_a.90931$Oz4.22220@rwcrnsc54...
Mike-- not a good time to hear distant beacons on 10 meters. Beacons are
good tests of propagation- if you can hear them, chances are you can make
contacts to wherever the signal's coming from. Tune your radio in to
28.254
MHz and you'll hear a local beacon, N0AR, from St. Paul. It transmits at
500
mW in 10 WPM Morse. As winter approachs, you'll start to hear more distant
beacons on 10. Last winter, I was hearing them from the west coast,
Canada,
Texas and Mexico quite easily, but 10 meters is a pretty "dead" summertime
band, except for the occasional opening.

Jackie