Field Day and the E season

Late spring and summer are times of low activity for me other than 6m and a casual FD trip.
Well the E skip season has been so lack luster that even QST magazine printed an article asking WORST E SEASON EVER ? Well at least in many years.

I was very active on 6m way back when in the 80s and early 90s and off and on after that, I revved up again in 2006 so that is ten years now. In the early days that  I noted it was crazy, DX F2 Es it was a hay day for me then. Running a Yaesu FT 620B at 20W I was working the world on 6 what fun, many of you will remember that time.

The last ten years I have been running a 100W rig and a 3el beam at a very modest height, I started just counting the number of QSOs I was making each year, nothing complicated not counting Es and F2 , AU or scatter just the number of Qs. Without boring you with numbers I will say the 2016 E season has so far netted the lowest Q count for the past ten years. So I hope your part the country has been better ( E and SE) seem to have it better than the NW where I live....Still waiting for the big one here in NW !!!

Field Day was a very nice Jeep trip to a abandoned fire lookout at about 8K feet here in southern Idaho. I was accompanied by my Son who is a Ham and my Grandson. We had a great trip and made a few contacts .

With the sun spots at 0 for many days the decline of the cycle will be felt by all of us in the coming years, I am hoping for a good fall and contest season as my 6m season has been POO....

Remember get on and have fun with whatever you have, enjoy the rest of the summer and 73...K7JAN

Spring 2016

I have been such a slacker with the blog, my last post was December 2015 so lets catch up.
I had a total fail with the big DXpeditions this winter failing to get the VP8's just to much for my HOA antennas and 100w but that's how it goes. I did make a run at the ARRL 10m contest in Dec. and think I may have done ok still waiting for results.

I found myself also floundering in the CQ WW 160 contests both CW and SSB conditions from the North West were just bad for low power this year so not expecting any wall paper this year. So mush for the doom and gloom I sure hope you all had a good DX and contest winter. The good news is that our multi one effort in the 2015 CQWWDXSSB contest won us the number one spot in call area seven so not all bad.

Also traveled to K7BUY for WPX SSB in March and as always best friend time and radio time was great, have no idea of how we did but was fun time.

Two old Hams having a good time. Ok well lets move on to 6 Meters one of the things I look foreword to in the spring....Well here in the NW it is a slow start from the first of May I have only put 15 stations in my log on 6. But three were double hop E to the E coast so not all bad just not many openings up this way. I did replace the rotor on the 6m beam so I guess that is equal to less openings haha.

I did install one of my FT 897's in my Jeep for the summer so I hope we have some 6m action, I do plan to work the summer VHF contests so lets hope for the best. I also made a few antenna changes here in HOA world, I installed a 32 foot vertical next to one of my trees in the back yard and it works very well and is hidden very well also.

Well I hope you all have a good spring/summer and that you get on and have fun with what ever you have....Best 73...Jim, K7JAN