"Jake Brodsky" wrote in message
news
Ten meters is a funny band. Signals can come and go very quickly.
It's not well suited for broadcast work, but it is pretty good for
making a casual contact. One way to tell if the band is open is to
check the beacon sub-band. You'd be amazed what you can hear, and
when...

True. I've gotten many cool QSL cards from beacon owners. Well, I've gotten
at least a dozen or so, which, for me, is many. In fact, I increased my
Morse copying speed just by listening to beacons-- most of 'em send their
IDs at around 10 WPM or so.

I am a pretty new amateur radio operator as well as a longtime SWL. I got my
General class amateur radio license last winter, and I quickly bought a
transceiver (the Icom IC-718) that goes from 10-160 meters. A simple,
excellent, yet inexpensive transceiver, which also makes a very good
shortwave receiver, in my opinion. For an antenna, I was using a borrowed
Hy-Gain 4 band trap vertical, with about 25 homemade radials of varying
lengths. It worked *great* on 10,15, 20 and 40 meters.

One of my favorite bands during the past winter was 10 meters. I would hears
lots of activity on 10, especially on weekend days, and I was making
contacts into the twilight and just beyond. Ten was just abuzz with chatter
then, and I logged many contacts there. When I first started making
contacts, I felt like a kid running through a candy store when I was on 10.

I have been "off the air" from transmitting since mid-July, due to a recent
move to an antenna-restricted location, but I have still been listening to
10 meters on my SSB-capable SW radio here and there since my move. Lately,
my listening has garnered nothing in the way of hams talking on 10 (I've
mostly concentrated my listening to 28.0-28.6 MHz). Yet, there were times
during that same time period (mid to late July) when I could hear several
beacons clearly that're 2,000 miles away from me. Still, I heard no one
doing any talking on the 10 meter ham bands... sometimes I wonder if 10
meters has a bad reputation for being a band you "just can't use" at this
time of the year, so no one even tries it.

Early this summer, just for S&G's (this was, of course, before I went off
the air) I would toss out a CQ or two on 10 meters, right around 28.4 MHz,
where I thought people might be listening. I even tried Morse Code on the
calling portion of the band, with no response.

I wondered how much of the lack of response was due to bad propagation--
i.e., people just weren't hearing me-- or people were just not bothering to
tune their transceivers to 10, instead favoring 20 and 40 meters, because of
the capricious reputation of 10 meters? I know the antenna was working fine
in mid-winter, because I made contacts all over the world on 10 then. I now
refer to 10 meters (temporarily, anyway) as "the ghost band". I know it'll
come back around, but dang. It was so much fun to be on it last winter.

I'm hoping to get back on the air from my local club station very soon, and
you can bet I'll be listening in on 10 meters now and then, especially as
winter nears. I am interested to see how the declining solar activity will
affect this coming winter's propagation on 10.

73 de Jackie