XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated, rec.radio.amateur.equipment

VE9KK Blog

///////////////////////////////////////////
Part time radio weekend.

Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:51 PM PDT http://ve3wdm.blogspot.com/2021/09/part-time-radio-weekend.html


In Canada and the U.S. this is a long weekend (Labour Day Weekend) with
Monday being a holiday. I was able to spend a little time on the radio in
the late afternoon a few days of the long weekend. I was able to spend a
few hours on both Saturday and Sunday. For the most part I spent my time
on 20m CW and both days the bands seemed to not be too busy. As I spent
some time on the radio I found the bands were not that quiet. It was deep
QSB that was working its magic to drop an S9 signal just at or below the
noise floor.
Having a radio with a waterfall is a great advantage and my Icom 7610's waterfall came in very handy showing me a signal before they would fade
away to nothingness. I heard 4X6FR from Israel calling CQ and I was
surprised he did not have a pile up. I gave him a few calls but he answered other stations. Not a problem I would just wait it out. This is where the
QSB kicked in and within a very short time I found only static and no
4X6FR! The 7610 has 2 independent receivers which is a great advantage. In this case with my headphones I listened for a reappearance of 4X6FR in my
left ear or VFO B. The right ear VFO A was scanning other signals that
appeared on the waterfall. Needless to say, the station from Israel never
again showed up on the waterfall, but he was still out there as he was
being spotted by U.S. stations on DX Summit.
As time went on the best way to describe what I saw on the waterfall
was "now you see them and now you don't" When I did tune on some DX and
made contact it was touch and go to make a fast and simple RST exchange and
if I felt lucky I added my name and location. I was pleased with my radio
time and made contact with 4O4T in Montenegro, R5AF, SP6AEG, LZ305AI,
IK5OPR and finally TZ4AM from Mali which was a new one for me. I saw him
being spotted on 17meters and I decided to venture there as 20m was getting
a bit slow.
The spot indicated "up 1" which meant there was a pile up and he was
operating split. I skipped over to 17 meters and then landing myself on his calling frequency just to make sure I could hear him before I got too
excited. There he was at S6 and I knew I had to move fast as the deep QSB
had robbed me a few times from catching nice DX. I set my radio to split
and dual watch which allows me to hear the DX and those who are calling
him. BUT strange thing no one was calling him and my waterfall was void of signals. It could be the QSB playing games with me. So when I heard him
call CQ I put my call out and he came back to me on my first call. TZ4AM
was in the log and I was happy. Very shortly after the contact the deep QSB took the signal from the waterfall.
It's Monday today and I was busy getting some household chores done
throughout the day. Maybe this evening I will be back on the radio and see
how 40m treats me.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)