On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:39:39 EDT, Bill Horne
wrote:
On 6/27/2010 6:37 PM, wrote:
I operated Field Day from opening until around midnight EDST Saturday.
Did not operate at all Sunday due to family obligations.
Now, a few minutes before the end of FD, I tuned around 80, 40, 20,
15, and 10 -- NOTHING. One CW station on the low end of 40 and
possibly a couple of South Americans on 20 SSB.
Are the bands that dead?
Same thing in E.MA. We ran 4A, all barefoot, but still you'd think we
were using spark transmitters for all the contacts we got. I've never
heard things so dead.
The only stations doing well were running class "F".
W1AC
The bands were dead here in southern Nevada, also.
Class F stations are Emergency Operations Centers. They are permanent
installations and as such have months to get their stations and in
particular their antennas correct. In contrast class A and B stations
are temporary setups. Most of them set up on Saturday morning,
although a few set up beginning at 1800 UTC Friday.
Our FD site was a patch of desert about 5 miles outside of town. In
the desert southwest where I live, temperatures get to 110 F at
midday. So we set up beginning at 6 AM local time (1300 UTC), when
the temp was only in the 70's. That took 2 hours, and then we waited
until 1100 local (1800 UTC).
We had the usual problems of temporary setups, such as bad cables. One
RF connector was found to be hot to the touch, so we found out where
most the RF from that transmitter went.
Dick AC7EL