After getting up this morning I saw things evolving on dxmaps.com and LiveMUF so decided to drive from my girlfriend’s place to my home and get the station ready. 2 m opened about half an hour after my arrival but no QSOs made yet. Heard UA4ALU from LN29 as well as RN6MA/LN08 but both were just above the noise – enough for me to hear them but obviously not the other way round, my 700 watts + 9 ele Yagi were not enough to raise them. Yet another half an hour later the band opened for about 3 minutes overhere, enough to work UA4ALU on CW. 😎
2 m was open for almost 2 hours in total but all the fun was further east, i.e. I was about 2-300 km too far west, just at the very edge. Pity but on the other hand glad to catch another opening at all after quite a bad season (at least for me) this year. 6 m also opened to the East, i.e. BY, BV & HS could be worked from Central Europe. Again I was not lucky enough, I could not raise a single of all the DX stations. Wonder how much power everybody else is running to make it through the pileups … kinda frustrating again and taking away the joy of the Magic Band I used to have years ago. So I concentrated once more on 4 m and made some nice QSOs there via Sporadic-E and tropo, too. Even worked a new one with ER1SS for DXCC #38 and a new square of course, too. OH2FNR provided another new square later on, now at #173. 😎
A new one on 70 MHz:
------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME CALLSIGN LOCATOR TX RX BAND MODE PROP. QRB ------------------------------------------------------------------ 09:09 UA4ALU LN29LA 559 599 2 m. CW ES 2178 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 09:52 ER1SS KN46JX 55 57 4 m. SSB ES 1245 11:08 DG8RAN JN69CU -12 -11 4 m. FT8 TR 395 11:36 EA6SX JM19IK +11 +11 4 m. FT8 ES 1760 11:38 EA6VQ JM19MP -01 -12 4 m. FT8 ES 1727 11:44 EA3AQJ JN11BI +08 +01 4 m. FT8 ES 1596 12:03 DK2GOX JN49WS -18 -11 4 m. FT8 TR 484 12:06 OZ1BP JO55GA -03 -11 4 m. FT8 TR 314 12:12 OZ6GH JO65BM -11 -17 4 m. FT8 TR 292 12:15 EA5IOG IM98PD -02 -04 4 m. FT8 ES 2025 12:21 OH2FNR KP2ØIL -03 +06 4 m. FT8 ES 1029 12:27 OH7TE KP3ØJS -02 -16 4 m. FT8 ES 1133 12:50 EA8DBM IL18OH -19 -14 4 m. FT8 ES 3747 13:11 DF3XZ JO53AP -12 -06 4 m. FT8 TR 281 ------------------------------------------------------------------
As you can see basically all the activity concentrated on FT8. While it has quite some advantages when signals are weak (i.e. neither all the tropo QSOs above would have been possible on CW or SSB nor the double hop ES to EA8 although we worked that path on sideband during previous openings, too) I’m not sure what to think about it when everybody only just hangs around FT8 as a general trend but no activity in CW/SSB anymore. For me it just does not feel right … 🙁