You Never Know Till You Try!

Reports on QRZ confirm what I said in my previous post and show that 10 meters is in a pretty bad state, however since I’ve spent a load of time building my moxon I am determined to get some results and so most mornings I am to be found sat at the radio tuned on to the CW portion of 10 meters. Occassionally I get lucky but most of the time I hear nothing and to be honest I rarely call CQ which really is not entering the spirit of the hobby.

The messages coming from the QRZ forum points towards the fact that if you don’t call CQ then you’ll never know who is out there and really it's right, if you don't try you wont know. A lot of amateurs just listen hoping to catch some DX and for some reason especially on 10 meters you don’t seem to get many callers, or is it just me? 

I was thinking about this early Saturday morning whilst sat in front of the rig tuned in at 28.030 and all as usual seemed dead; it was the same when I tuned up and down the whole band and even a quick jump up to SSB proved fruitless. I thought "here we go again another weekend of the band being completely quiet".

So simply for the hell of it and before I switched down to the lower bands I called CQ and blow me within three calls had a reply from a Japanese station, who gave me a 579 and we had a good chat for about fifteen minutes. Of course as soon as we had finished up popped other Europearn stations desperate to contact my Japanese friend! Just goes to show it’s always worth a try and so in future I will always do a CQ just in case there is someone hiding out there.

I can’t remember if I said I had been looking in to building a five band hex beam, since building the cobweb and moxon I’ve been mulling over about doing another project and the hex seemed quite tempting. But unfortunately after thoroughly measuring up and really doing my research I’ve come to the conclusion that it is just too big and I wouldn’t get away with an antenna that size in the garden. Which is a real shame but I have to be very careful living in area of outstanding natural beauty and I don’t want the wrath of any locals especially since I’ve got away with the cobweb.

......Ah well back to the drawing board!