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