Great conditions on ten meters made me spend quality QSO time on a band I don't often visit. But since the start of summer, some magical openings have happened on ten meters, and tonight was no exception.
Tonight's Contact Plot shows you can just about set your watch by Ham Radio. Virtually every station lies along a straight line, practically a dead match of Earths greyline.
Tonight's contacts run a beeline from New Hampshire, all the way to Oklahoma, all made between 8:30PM & 10:30PM EST. Every one had 10 over S-9 signals, and at the same time, New Hampshire & Oklahoma were sounding equally loud, with very little fading up until around 1:30 UTC.
Being inside that time frame, and along that straight arrow track, you can just about visualize the greyline of sunset marching across the globe from east to west. And with Google Earth, you can see how similar tonight's plot, and the actual greyline actually is.
It was fun. And I really was surprised to have "armchair" copy QSO's from stations running as low as 25 watts. I don't think anyone was working with more than 100 watts, and my little 100 Watt "peanut whistle" Yeasu 857-D was doing great.
My regards to everyone in the contact plot, to me, it truly was a awesome night of 10 Meter Ham Radio.
4 comments:
Yes it sure was fun. Good to see the band open. Iplayed with Google Earth as you have done here. Very interesting to see the sharpness of my beam. You can reallytell which way I had it pointing. The only thing I can't figure out is how you made the lines to and from your contacts. Anyway great blog site and very intersting way to post your logs.
73's DE N5JJZ Scott
Thanks Scott, I must be holding my mouth right. I don't know how those lines appear.
I'm using a new Beta 5.0 Version of Ham Radio Deluxe, I'm just highlighting the contacts in the logbook and plotting them on Google Earth using the "Lookup" selection in the logbook pull-down menu, it then does all the magic. Thank's again for the visit, & the QSO, I'm see ya' on 10 again. Come visit the Blog anytime. 73' Bob KI4HEE
Oh OK.....I just went to Google Earth and did it manually between my log book and QRZ.com to get coordinates. I was thinking "what dedication to go through all this"...I'll have to check out Ham Radio Deluxe. I would like to post those to my web site as well. Well again enjoyed the QSO and the information swap. Check out N5JJZ.com for my website. Not a lot there at the moment but a few pics of my tower and antenna's along with construction pics of the tower. More to come though.
73's DE N5JJZ Scott
Hey Scott, I'm sure you'll figure it out, it's a great way to visualize how the band conditions effect your signal. BTW I have a link to the download page of HRD over on the right side column of the blog. You can't beat the price...it's free! And after you try it out, you'll wonder why it is free, it has more features than stuff that's for sale.
You got a neat website, I'm impressed with your work on the tower, very impressed with the welding. It's been up for 2 years now, any problems with dealing with heavy weather? My mom used to live with my brother & his family over in Jenks and she had once spent the night in the bathtub under threat of tornados. While we have to deal with potential hurricanes here, you gotta deal with twisters much more often. I suppose one of those could really make a tower into a pretzel.
I've thought about making up a website, but I'm really impressed how easy it is to make a blog, it seems more timely and pretty bulletproof for a internet neophyte like me. I also can't beat the price...another freebee.
Thanks again for checking out the blog, & good luck on getting google earth to make "purdy pitchers' " for you too.
'73 Bob KI4HEE
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