Propagation sucked today. Six and above stayed closed all day long. Thus I had to rely on Meteor Scatter to work something new. The Camb-Hams are currently active as GS3PYE/P from the Isle of Mull, IOTA EU-008, in the relatively rare gridsquare IO76. I had worked them on 6 m during their 2013’s expedition already but the QSOs on 4 and 2 m via MS this morning provided a new square on both bands. Also LA4LN who was in JO29 for a few days contributed a new square on 6 m. 😎
At 18z 6 m opened slightly to the south providing an ES link down to TJ3SN. Had to listen for quite some time to catch the 2 minutes when he was finally audible and fighting my way through the pileup. Great to work a new one even under rather bad condx! One and a half hour later there was TEP propagation into South America again. This time PP1CZ was active himself, not just his beacon, so I did work another new gridsquare on 6 m. 🙂
Before switching off the radio around local midnight I made a small “tour” around the HF bands. 15 m was still wide open into the U.S. Think the overall higher MUF due to Sporadic E (also if it did not reach 50 MHz much) helps HF propagation, too. Have to think about which category I’m going to start during WPX-CW in 2 weeks. Will it be a single band entry (and if yes which band?) or rather going SOAB? I know I can’t win the latter one so this would be just for fun or reaching some personal goals, i.e. cracking last year’s score …