In article ,
Bill Gunshannon wrote:

I have just set up my vertical and a couple of HF rigs after a hiatus of
more than a decade. I have not heard a single station above 40M yet.
I did hear a PA0 on 80M, good signal too.

Guess I picked the wrong time to get interested again. :-(

As another poster said, "Not necessarily". The higher bands do open,
although less well than during a sunspot peak. Part of the problem, I
think, is that so many people are convinced that the higher bands are
dead that they don't bother to listen _or_ call CQ.

A few weeks ago I had a nice (brief but easily-copyable) PSK31 contact
on 20, from northern California to a polysyllabic city on the
Kamchatka peninsula. 35 watts and a simple horizontal dipole at 25'
on my end.

Looking
around for antenna wire now so I can get some kind of a dipole up as I
was really never impressed with the oerformance of any of my trap verticals.

Ordinary TTHN-insulated stranded wire from your local homebuilding
store works fine and isn't expensive. No need to get fancy, unless of
course you _want_ to get fancy :-)

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
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