Yesterday morning I managed a quick qso with a Cuban station, a first for me for some time, I think the last Cuban station I contacted was round about the last sunspot maximum.
Looking at my log book I think I’ve done pretty well considering everyone is saying that this sunspot cycle has not been so good. Along with the usual Europeans and of course across the pond I have VKs, ZLs, JAs, and a few Chinese and Vietnamese not forgetting my couple of stations from Antarctica.
This is the first peak that I used all homebrew antennas so I’m really pleased and amazed that everything has worked so well. I’m sure if I had a nice big yagi the list would be much more impressive, but I’m certainly not complaining.
I’d love to get some Indian stations but for some reason so far I've missed out, probably I suspect just from timing, but there is still plenty of time and hopefully the peak will continue well in to the year.
I’m still awaiting my Inrad filters for the mark V, I thought they would have arrived by now but on ringing up the supplier it seemed there had been a mistake in my order so it’s going to take another 2 weeks.
Incidentally whilst inquiring on the phone I bit the bullet and also ordered the IF improvement MOD, a friend of mine has it installed on his Mark V and was telling me how good it is in reducing the background hiss. It’s now very noticeable how sometimes when coming across a station where it’s crowded I think I could really use those filters!
I still haven’t had the time to drop the cobweb down for its yearly service, when I do get round to it I shall post some pictures.
I’ve decided to try and find myself a cheap 2m rig; I used to have an old Yaesu FT 480 that I used when learning CW many moons ago, but once qualified I sold it on as I found it wasn’t getting used very much. Since the moxon has been taken down I now have the light weight rotator sitting in the shed doing nothing, so it would be quite nice to build a small 2m yagi and see what DX I could get.
No comments:
Post a Comment