Hi all,
Just to set the record straight, 17M openings at this point in the sunspot cycle are rare but when it opens it's G O O D! 20M has been a rollercoaster, one day good one day bad and often changes hour to hour. There's your solar activity, once in a while it burps. Like 6M, 10M experiences sporadic E which BTW is caused by UV radiation which is why it's prevelent when the sun is overhead in summer, it's not F skip caused by sunspots.
Beaver;
" For the CB'ers, time to dust off the sideband rig and shoot some skip."
Nice to see you're suggesting illegal activity again.
"Back in the day, I've talked all around the world on a 12watt sideband CB. From eastern Europe down to Africa and out to pacifica dx'ing Japan, Australia, ect...Fun stuff."
Yeah, I did it too but that was before you were born so the staute of limitations has run out. Oh, are you SURE of who you were talking to or was it me speaking in Spanish while adjusting the power to simulate QSB and claiming to be in Puerto Rico or Cuba? (;->) FYI, Pacifica is a radio network, the postal delivery name is Oceanica.
Joe;
A few years ago there was such fantastic coastal ducting I worked from the Canadian Maritimes to the Florida Keys through a local 2M repeater using an HT at 1W output. We all had a blast but the tricky part was waiting long enough for ALL the repeaters to drop before transmitting so the local one could be heard. I have to admit that sometimes one of us would light up two or more repeaters and it became an ERP battle. The difference however is we were working our local repeaters, not "DX".
Darn it, I missed that special event, I was copying BPSK31 on 20M and the stations were using SSB up the band, GGGRRRR! Joe, one of my friends served aboard the Ling, I would have loved to work her. Another served aboard the USS New Jersey BB62 Amateur callsign NJ2BB docked in Camden. Come to think of it, I'm well out of range of both except perhaps on 40M, I should have been listening there. Oh, don't call them OLD, the grey ladies never grow OLD, they only get rusty bottoms like some of us hams. (;->)
Here's a shot of the Grand Damme herself with the antennas clearly visible. The two wires over the turrets aren't Navy issue, that is unless the gunners want to put a 16" shell through them. (;->)
