Well, so far it's been pretty quiet. Nobody fell off a tower or out of a tree, or blew up a radio or generator, at least not yet.
The Solar Index dropped off last week, and with it, HF propagation. We only have 1 'Big Gun" station this year, and he's running CW, where each contact nets two points. The other two stations we have set up, besides mine, are using fairly low dipoles and a vertical. They're doing kinda-sorta OK, but I doubt if we'll get even one-third the points we scored last year.
Things went pretty smoothly for me setting up the satellite station, and I was ready to go about 20 minutes before the event started. The first satellite pass didn't occur until 45 minutes later, so I ran around and helped everybody else chase Murphy away.
So far I've made 16 satellite contacts after untangling a couple of problems of my own, and the higher-elevation passes will occur later tonight.
Next pass is AO-7, and it happens in 10 minutes, so I'll end this.
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<i>The Fisher Saga</i> Continues - Act III -
Been working on this post since right after Thanksgiving. I'm making very good progress on the Fisher, and will most likely power it up...
Good luck in the contest, OM. de AJ6F
ReplyDeleteHave fun anyway... Sometimes just sitting and BSing is worth the time spent! :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks, but it's getting to be a grind. Gets a little tougher every year, and I'm stiff and sore longer each time.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to look into building a simpler set up for next year. I have a single antenna that covers both bands, and "spare" azimuth/elevation rotators. I just need some type of single mast or tubular toer support to save dragging all this heavy stuff out each year.