I had a play in last weekend’s major CQ WW CW contest – staying on 10m all the time. Goal was to work as many DXCC and CQ zones as I could. I ended up with 28 zones and 79 DXCC worked. The link below shows the QSOs graphically:
Gear was Icom 756ProII/Cushcraft MA5B mini-beam at 9m and Writelog software for rig control, cw decoding and keying.
After almost a month of very poor or non-existent NA DX conditions came back this week down south (Scottish dxers saw a return last week). On 25 November at 0629 I had a personal first – XEARZ-AM Zer Radio was coming into London on 1650 kHz with easy listening music and “Zer Radio 16-50” ids as can be seen below:
Finally, a welcome back home to Paul C after his hospital stay. Take it easy Paul but keep those dx-ears of yours available!
TA MF has been very poor the last few days though some dxers have been getting some good results in the afternoons to Asia – see JF’s blog – http://skegnessdx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/skegness-log-19-10-13-mw.html
Here in London 10m has been quite open and I worked my 264 DXCC yesterday – FK8DD Sam in French New Caledonia – http://www.corail.nc/FK8DD/index.html
Today I played around on 10m AM using my Icom 756 PROII to drive my Acom 1000 amplifier. Antenna was the 1/2 G5RV as stormy conditions in London meant I kept the Tennamast down so was not using the Cushcraft mini-beam MA5B. Had a nice QSO with VE3FGU in Keswick Ontario – http://www.qrz.com/db/VE3FGU The pint-size G5RV is not a bad performer on 10m (or 40m) though it is pretty poor on the other bands. The AM portion of the band is from 29.0 – 29.1 MHz.
Other DX worked on 28 MHz (10m band== 28 MHz) over the weekend included KG4HF with rtty in Guantanamo Bay and an ssb contact with JW9JKA Svalbard island.
The sorely underrated George Harrison asked “What is Life?” Many dxers ask “What is DX?” Some band II dxers don’t consider anything under 1100 km via Tropo to be DX. To be honest I don’t really consider WBBR on 1130 kHz or France Bleu Nord on 94.7 Mhz to be DX. However I do consider my tropo reception on 23 September of Virgin Radio Montreuil/le Bois-de-Sel on 87.9 MHz to be DX despite the transmitter location being only 181 km from me.
My definition of DX is very simple – DX is “unusual reception at your QTH with your equipment”. Hence with my Perseus SDR/Flag I would expect to hear WBBR if the propagation is there. Likewise France Bleu Nord with the Sony XDR and Triax FM7. For another dxer living next door in London with a Tecsun portable and long wire, receiving WBBR would be DX and receiving France Bleu on the telescopic would be DX. Receiving Virgin on 87.9 was DX for me as it is vertically polarised, low power and my antenna is horizontal and it is normally not present even assuming the frequency is clear.