60 meter Band Big Disappointment

I’d built my 60 meter antenna and had hung it up in the silver birch at the end of the garden, all connected up ready to start listening full of anticipation. 

Over the past week I have listened and heard the odd ham but quite honestly I was disappointed, I was hoping for more, no CW at all, nothing all week. As for side band there were a few but enough to count on one hand. 

Then this morning as there was a big competition going on and most of the bands were busy I’d thought I try 5MHz to see what was about, 5.325.00 to be precise. What I heard really astounded me and believe me I’m no saint, the language was colourful to say the least, whoever these two muppets were they were local boys from around Gloucestershire, it wasn’t hard to tell by their extremely thick Gloster accents. 

No call signs naturally, just happy to gossip about various people in their neighbourhood whom obviously they didn’t like and in doing so swear as much as they could. As I said I’m no saint but you don’t swear on the radio, certainly not the language they were using its common sense, something that these idiots were obviously lacking. 

In the end after listening for about 10 minutes in case they gave anything away I gave up and turned the rig off. I’m taking the antenna down, I don’t want to be a part of that, its part of the reason I hardly do side band, give me CW any day. No doubt there will be operators out there saying if you don’t use the band you will lose it, well sorry I won’t be a part of that particular band when there are idiots like that around. Enough said and back I go to CW! 

On a different note I’m almost ready to buy the K2, I rang the UK distributor and at the moment they are waiting for new stock, so I will ring back next week and put my order in. I must admit I was tempted by the Kenwood TS 590 but after serious investigations (mainly through Eham and You Tube) I decided on the K2. Overall the impression is that the RX quality of the K2 is marginally better but of course the winner for me was that you have the pleasure of building the transceiver. 

I’m going for the basic 15 watts first and see how it goes, I’m really looking forward to building this rig, after all it’s taken 3 RockMites and one OHR 100A to get to this point. More updates will follow once I have the kit.