Bill Gunshannon wrote:
Bert Hyman writes:
Bill Gunshannon wrote: in

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.

Not necessarily; there's nowhere to go but up as the sunspots return.

I run Faros on the PC in the shack every weekend, from Friday
afternoon 'til Sunday evening watching and waiting ...

http://www.dxatlas.com/Faros/

One of my earliest ham-radio memories is a 1961 CQ cover with the
depressing title "Cycle 19 - The Declining Years" (I was first
licensed in January 1961).


Well, I just went out this morning and put up a 40M dipole (best I could
come up with from the junk left over in my cellar) and it hears a lot
better than the vertical. (A quick test using CHU showed it to be at
least twice as good as the vertical. Heard some guys chatting on 20M.
Heard what sounded like some slowscan and some packet, too. Nothing
above 20M but definitely better than what I heard during SS a couple
weekends ago. Have to find a listing for beacons and start getting
into this again. I had almost forgot how much fun it could be. Maybe
my next house will even have a tower and an HF beam. :-)

Wonder whent he next RTTY contest is? That was always my favorite mode.

All the best for the holidays to everyone.

bill
KB3YV

The nice thing about a full 40m lambda/2 dipole is that it'll accept power
on 15m as well. While 15 has been mostly dead, there have been times when
there's activity. I don't have anything for 10m (yet) so I can't give my
personal impression, though some hams have reported short openings. 40 & 80
have been pretty hot... worked China on 40 in the WWDX CW contest... heard a
G3 working a pileup on 80m CW a few nights ago. I'm on the left coast and
have just low dipoles for those bands (80m is a 4-wire cage inverted vee).
Bryan WA7PRC