[Lowfer] A stranger to 80 meters showed up tonight...

[Mike.WE0H]

Last week I worked Slovenia on 80m CW with my vertical and 200w. Piece 
of cake. The bands open but many people are sleeping when they do or at 
work if it is daylight. Using WSPR a guy can check band propagation real 
quick and decide what band it is worth calling CQ on or not. 30m was 
open into Japan around 9am here this morning. It's open to the UK now.

For sure get moving on a transverter and get a WSPR signal on 1750 
meters. Might get lucky and get a DX decode if the interest grows for 
that band. Have to do the research first and find out what part of the 
band is QRM free outside North America.

I find many stations running 1w or less decoding every day & night. 5w 
isn't really QRP for WSPR mode. I believe Dave /17 is running 100 or 200 
milliwatts on 600 meters and crossing the pond in WSPR mode most nights.

This mode will also help a fellow when comparing different antenna 
configurations as you can get a rough idea how strong your signal is 
each day/night and make changes and see what you are averaging after 
that. Use several days of data collecting to compensate for propagation 
differences. Neat stuff...

Mike
WE0H