Our station was reserved for DL3BQA to operate in the ARRL-RTTY-Roundup last weekend. While he enjoyed some great runs on 15 m Sunday afternoon I had some fun on 6 m as there was a great winter E-skip opening into EI, signals up to S9+20, skip was just right. Then it suddenly dawned on me that there must of course be ES on 10 m, too, and that the ES might link into the F2 propagation slightly there from Western EU to the U.S. judging from a few cluster spots. Quickly checking 10 m I just copied PZ5RA and nobody else. Nevertheless gave it a try CQing myself and et voila, worked some 55 stations in 1,5 hours on a “dead” 10 m band. 🙂 17 states and 2 provinces were the net result, furthest west were 1 x XE and 1 x AR and a handful of LA, MS & TX guys. All the rest being East Coast up and down … It proved again you have to call CQ to make contacts, even on a supposedly dead band. 😎
After Uwe had closed down I spent a bit extra time on the other bands just handing out a few more points here and there …
ARRL RTTY Roundup Call: DH8BQA Class: SO Unlimited HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 4,5 Summary: Band QSOs ------------ 80: 15 40: 52 20: 0 15: 13 10: 55 ------------ Total: 135 State/Prov = 24 Countries = 38 Total Score = 8,370 Comments: Elecraft K3, KPA500 + 6 ele OWAs (15/10) and dipoles (80/40).