Band Conditions and DX

My apologies for not posting of late. Just too much going on but I do manage to get down to the shack late in the evenings. This has always been my favourite time to hunt DX. I’m a casual DXer and I don’t do contests. My work schedule allows for late nights and early morning operating times. I follow Hamspots.net, and operate digital and JT65-HF exclusively. I keep power levels below 20 watts and 99% of the time keep it at 10 watts out using my FT-950. I’ve done this even during the lowest parts of the 11 year sun cycle and still managed to work lots of rare and obscure stations. Often when the band seemed dead, out pops a rare South Pacific station and I snag them on the first call.

Just yesterday I worked Tanzania, 5H3NP, Noel, at 0400Z on 20m psk31 running all of 15 watts. Noel had a good clear signal and he told me he’s on every night at the same time. I did hear him the previous evening but he was working Europeans and Russian stations in a pile up.

 

 

A couple of days ago, on 10 meters Serg, D2QR was on from Angola; again a nice strong signal and worked him on his first CQ call. The call looked familiar and checked my log and sure enough I had worked Serg in 2004 on 20 meters.

Earlier at 0445Z I worked Metin in Istanbul Turkey on 20m psk31. I noticed that I worked the Turkish and Tanzanian just after their sunrise times. I monitor this by reception reports displayed by PSKReporter maps and can watch the grey line creep along the countries that I’ve just worked. It’s a great DXer’s tool. It’s integrated into the current version of Digital Master 780.

Conditions have been really very good lately and urge you to get on the bands and work some of the rarer low power stations currently easy pickings during the late night hours on 20 meters and daytime DX on the busy 10 meter band.

K5D - Desecheo Island Expedition - Worked!

Desecheo Island off the coast of Puerto Rico was activated and will be on the air from February 12 - 26, 2009. The ops at K5D are covering most of the HF bands for the duration. Check your DX cluster of choice to discover their operating band and mode. They also have a very detailed website and also an online logbook that's updated at least twice a day. I've just worked them this afternoon on 17m SSB and they have an excellent signal to the Ottawa area. They've been on most days and I had a few spare minutes so I decided to work them. The ops work split and announce the listening frequency on the cluster and occasionally while transmitting. Still, you hear many ops trying to work the expedition on their transmit frequency.

I've been using the FT-950 and my re-furbished Cushcraft R6000 vertical. It's a nice combo and K5D came back on my second call. I'm running 100 watts and a wee bit of processing (20%) - seems to be working well. His signal was S5 - S9 and the ops are very very good in working all the stations. Not rapid fire fast, but a nice easy pace.












The FT-950 is very easy to set up on split and with the latest "PEP950" updates the receiver is very quiet - signals jump out. The "PEP950" updates include processor and dsp fixes and new features added to an already great transceiver.

K5D is the 6th most-needed DXCC entity world-wide, the 3rd most-needed DXCC entity in Europe and the 2nd most-needed DXCC entity in Asia.