The Magic band surprises yet again

Yesterday 17 November the 6m band opened yet again and many South African stations were able to work into Europe. There has not been a significant opening in months. In fact, the TEP season which should have peaked at around equinox 22 September (almost 2 months ago)  has been a huge disappointment.

All that changed yesterday. The band opened up with a vengeance and the opening we had lasted for several hours. At times the signals were remarkably strong with the odd reports received of S9+25 dB This seldom happens, most of the time we must be satisfied with working signals that are just above the noise floor and often distorted due to the typical multipath that the signals follow.

The image certainly suggests that this was a typical TEP opening, but who knows? The SFI has been climbing and is now sitting at 177. I sure hope this trend continues. It could make for a interesting CW-WW-CW contest this coming weekend.

I managed to work 141 stations from 45 grid squares during the opening.

No new DXCC entities were worked, seems like I am stuck at 55 countries worked/confirmed. I did work a few new grid squares (3 new grid squares already confirmed in LoTW) total now 156 VUCC grids confirmed on LoTW.

My HRD log shows 273 grids worked with 186 confirmed.

These 6m openings are great. For a few hours it feels as if you have the world at your feet, with dozens of callers begging to work you. Then "poof",  it's all over and back to being a tiny pistol and listening to white noise yet again……

6m 17 November 2013

ZS6A 6m grids worked 17 Nov 2013

Working the DX pileup: Operating guide

 

I found the following video clip to be most informative:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=svLlfrFA-1E

It might seem like a bit of a joke, but it is not. The advice given IMHO is on the money.

I was very surprised to see that some of the poor behaviour being placed with the expedition operators, but the author makes 100% sense.

There is very good advice given for both the DX expedition operators as well as the DX chasers.

JARTS RTTY 2013

My good friend Hal ZS6WB suggested that I should consider taking part in the event. I don’t operate much on HF digital modes and my log is a testament to that fact. My digital DXCC statistics are pretty poor to say the least. Based on this I decided to give the JARTS contest a go.

I am very pleased I followed Hal’s advice.

I managed to make 451 QSOs and I worked 55 DXCC entities in the process.

Since don’t have decent HF antennas I decided to concentrate my efforts to the 10m band. On 10m I use a rigid rotatable dipole up at some 8m agl. This clearly shows how poor the rest of the antenna farm is…….<insert smiley>

As I write this (some 7 hours after the contest) I see I have already have a great number of QSOs confirmed via LoTW including 6 much needed ATNOs on digital modes. I am hoping I might just find enough confirmations on LoTW to reach the 100 required for a ARRL Digital DXCC in the next few days.  My stats show 106 worked, 67 confirmed (still a long way to go).

There were many memorable moments during the contest:

I worked David K2DSL a fellow blogger.

Being called by ATNO’s whilst running: CE, WH6, XE and UP amongst others.

On the down side:

Why do some stations persist on calling when one is trying to work partials calls?

Does “P5ABC ?” not mean anything .

Seemingly the guilty do not understand the meaning of “KN” either.

It seemed sending “P5ABC ? P5ABC ? P5ABC ? de ZS6A KN” meant that it was an invitation for any station to call immediately without even a moment’s pause or hesitation. I understand this is a competition and not a tea party, but do we really need to act in this way?

The scatter graph below is very revealing. It clearly shows the typical age of the amateur population.

There are seemingly very few amateurs younger than 40. Most are between 40 and 80 years old.

The age of zero must be ignored. Issued by XYL’s and YL’s

The age of 99 was given by club stations.

QSOs vs. contestants Age

QSOs vs time

Club Log – Best kept secret

I am sure we have all used club log before, but I suspect there are others like me that did not realize that there is much more to it than what meets the eye.

https://secure.clublog.org/index.php

The full potential is only realized after one uploads your log to the system. It provides the user with very detailed statistics:

Countries worked / confirmed / needed/ by band / by mode /by date etc…..

https://secure.clublog.org/dxccchart.php?call=ZS6A

It alerts one of mistakes, logging errors and even highlights calls that are suspect or illegal (pirate) operations.

The user can decide if his logs should remain private or whether they can be viewed by other users. Personally I think the logs should be placed in the public domain; this will allow the league standings to be meaningful and will promote healthy competition amongst peers.

By uploading logs to Club Log will also enable the system to determine which entities are most wanted; in turn the DX expedition planners will use this information to provide us with much needed new ones.

It is quite amazing all this good stuff and it is for free, no strings attached…..