11m conditions

Nice to hear some of you guys got some good 11m conditions.

By the time I got back to the radio it was a bit flakey with no real chance of a DX contact.


Re. the magazines - they did start becoming expensive buys which stopped me purchasing them, (probably same for others and as readership fell.....prices went up!) Plus technology moves on. You have to be a mathematician, contortionist, rich garage/tool owner and better have a decent laptop so you can plug it into a modern car! 
Similar with the electronics stuff, no basic projects just microprocessor based and then later pre-assembled kits, no fun. Plugging kit 'A' into kit 'B' really isn't building in my book. I don't profess to building a mobile phone whenever I plug it in to charge??? 

peetassen wrote:

Captain Fantastic wrote:

peetassen wrote:

Captain Fantastic wrote:

I can hear a lot, but I'm not getting picked up with only 4W... the guys with +50W are taking all the calls 

 try 27.605

Unfortunately I've only got a legal Jackson II... so that's out of my bandwidth 

to bad, more UK stations at the moment at 605. any clean channel/frequency for you?

I somehow managed to get the attention of 'Richard' in Hull ("unit 224" or something, I didn't get his full callsign). Actually, he thought I was a local UK station calling him since he was getting me at 5&9. So we jumped down a few channels out of the mix and had a good chat for a couple of minutes. I was pleased with that!

Later on that evening I was hearing another station calling DX and I replied - turned out to be a local here in Zurich so we had a natter anyway 

Some of you might speak to 'Benjamin' from Zurich. He is not too far from me, but has a licence to put out more power. He was very active yesterday.

Funny though, it was snowing like crazy here during all that. Would that help the propagation somehow?

The snow thing you mentioned Ian would be a interesting thing to find out , I remember here in the UK in London we did have a heavy snow fall quite a long while back ,nothing like you guys in Switzerland though lol and I dont know if was my imagination but while it was snowing I found I was hear stations alot clearer than I normally did when it was dry weather ,also I found this if we get a heavy low mist/fog but as I said I dont know if it was my imagination.

Radio waves are reflected, absorbed, scattered, refracted and diffracted by the atmospheric conditions that they encounter......


Could be?

Victor wrote:

Radio waves are reflected, absorbed, scattered, refracted and diffracted by the atmospheric conditions that they encounter......


Could be?

(Tongue in cheek...) Maybe they get pulled down by the snowflakes as the waves pass and land on the ground beneath 

Ha, Ha!

Nice one Ian, made me laugh

We all know the effects of ionospheric layers which are part of the atmosphere and temperature or tropospheric inversion. It's what makes radio propagation or skip such fun in the radio world. Snow, hail or even rain must have an effect that isn't solely down to attenuation or absorption. Hence the "Could be?".

Hello Ian,

Richard in Hull is a very strong station. His full call is 26OK224. He is very close to the Humber and always works well into the States when the prop is running. He works stations 5/9 from 2 div that I cannot even hear. He was not running horizontal either. The Humber gives him a fantastic ground plane.

A few yrs back i was chatting to someone in north Italy from Doncaster on super low fm it was thick fog in Doncaster but a mate who was half a mile up the road could't hear him the weather can do funny things.

John123 wrote:

Richard in Hull is a very strong station. His full call is 26OK224.

Thanks for that info, much appreciated. I can add it properly in my log now.

I still live in hope of catching one of you guys at some point!

I have not been listening today (wife dragged me to IKEA!) but checking just now it does not look like I missed anything this afternoon. We're promised more snow tomorrow, so maybe I'll get lucky again, who knows?

Opened a bit. Hearing Spain on 555, and the operator is reporting reaching Germany, Netherlands and UK - so maybe you guys wanna fire up the rigs?

Captain Fantastic wrote:

John123 wrote:

Richard in Hull is a very strong station. His full call is 26OK224.

Thanks for that info, much appreciated. I can add it properly in my log now.

I still live in hope of catching one of you guys at some point!

I have not been listening today (wife dragged me to IKEA!) but checking just now it does not look like I missed anything this afternoon. We're promised more snow tomorrow, so maybe I'll get lucky again, who knows?

You are welcome, Ian. I am a mobile station only, so I am missing a lot of radio time with the current lockdown restrictions in England. Hopefully with the vaccine been distributed things will get better. I look forward to catching you soon.

I can hear some feint stations currently on 555 and below.
Div 108 and a clear 26 station.

Surprised to find the T5 has been lit up for the last 15 minutes! Italy and Germany romping in at S9+. Takes me back to the days in the early 80's when this level of activity from these countries was considered QRM!!!!

555 USB was active for about two hours this afternoon, although weak. I got a contact in Germany, but unfortunately I couldn't properly make out his reply - too weak.

Now here's an odd thing - for about an hour this afternoon too, there were lots of German and Polish stations making relatively short contacts with each other on the lower band, using FM. They were very strong here with me. There was even one German guy on 27.405 pumping out Ompappa Ompappa music in between calling out.

I could hear 108 and 26 stations from N. England. I wrote them down if you are interested.
Sadly I can't get out for them to hear me, it seemed like a lot of stations were calling back to them again.

And guess what? It's snowing heavily here again...

555 is alive right now.

Firetrap wrote:

The band seems to be having a late "post summer" wake up.


Anyone else think so?

I agree very busy last two days but signals increasing strongly  and just as quickly disappearing. Plenty from Scandinavia, Germany, France and Italy. Difficult to work on QRP,  though I have worked a few on a T2LT from home on low power. Including a good QSO with
21 CT 773 from Southern Sweden
108 CT 259 Stuart 
13 UE 251 in Germany
14 WAC 917
14 EK 010

Lets hope it stays open and for less QRM from stations who even when acknowledged by callsign just won't wait there turn

Some good contacts there, Steve.

Captain Fantastic wrote:

I could hear 108 and 26 stations from N. England. I wrote them down if you are interested.
Sadly I can't get out for them to hear me, it seemed like a lot of stations were calling back to them again.

And guess what? It's snowing heavily here again...

It would be interesting to know which stations you were receiving, Ian.

Hi John, here are the ones I wrote down that were very clear.

108 AT 277 - James 20 miles w of Glasgow
108 TM 162
108 AW 200

26 DW 429 David
26 PR 069
26 AZ 129

There was a 26 CT but I didn't catch the number, and maybe one of those 108's was Dundee not sure.

A bit of propogation again today into Europe with similar QRM and fluctuating signals received. Managed some contacts into  Portugal and Spain.

31 AT 273
30 AT 210

and a really good long QSO with 30 AT 123 Mike who now lives in Alicante having moved there 30 years ago but originally from Newcastle. Eventually the QRM built up to a point that we had to QRT then so we could do it properly rather than just loose each other. Shame as both ways the reports were radio 5 at it's best.

Some nice contacts there, Steve.

Toobad wrote:

Surprised to find the T5 has been lit up for the last 15 minutes! Italy and Germany romping in at S9+. Takes me back to the days in the early 80's when this level of activity from these countries was considered QRM!!!!

It still gives me a buzz when I hear loads of stations calling on the triple.