[ADXA] New Standing for Jim, WB5AAA

[Pat Patterson]

Jim, WB5AAA has provided updated standing info.  He has been plugging away
despite the sub-optimal band conditions.  Jim has pushed his mixed DXCC up
to 311 and has added about a half-dozen new ones on each band.  He has some
FB antennas and rigs to continue the chase.  Nice going Jim.

While the bands have been a bit dismal lately I had a nice surprise Friday
morning.  Champ, JT1CO, was on 20M SSB around 12:30UTC and had a really big
signal....well over S9.  I have worked Champ on CW on several bands but it
was nice to hook-up on phone on 20M.   On Wednesday morning I worked Clive,
3B8CF on 30M FT8 around 12:00UTC.  He gave me a +8 (8db above the Average
Gaussian Weighted Noise level in a 2.5KHz channel) and I gave him a report
of -2.  We could have easily worked on CW.  The cool thing was that he was
much stronger on long path....14,510mi versus 10,400mi on the short path.
So, when you least expect it, something unusual will make you go
"whaaaaat"!

The 6M Sporadic E season is getting started.  Several good outbreaks in the
past couple of days.  Quite a few hook ups with Central American and
Caribbean stations.  FT8 is really gaining popularity on 6M.  I see lots of
6M "Ol' Timers" on FT8 now.   The ARRL June VHF test will be a good test to
see what modes folks favor.  General consensus is that if you have a strong
opening with good signal strength your rate will be a lot better on SSB or
CW.  FT8 is much faster that JT65 or JT9 but it still requires a minimum of
about 2 minutes/QSO.  When conditions are marginal FT8 is probably the
better choice.  The new WSJT-X MSK144 mode offers lots of improvement over
FSK-441.  Meteor Scatter using MSK144 has also become a big factor in VHF
contests.  Great way to pick up multipliers.  I'm going to try it from my
Rover with a Moxon and 100W....probably being overly optimistic but going
to give it a shot!  Running with one of the big contest stations using high
gain antennas and QRO will help the probabilities of a suitable size rock
showing up!

Get on and spin that dial....never know what you might turn up.

73,
Pat, W5VY
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/adxa/attachments/20180506/18472f0a/attachment.html>