Tonight was the first time since we moved into the new house that I spent some serious time tuning around the HF bands and listening. I was kind of amazed at how much I was hearing - for example, right now on 40M I am hearing 13 CW, 2 Olivia, and 2 SSB contacts between 7000 and 7100 kHz, and that's only with a piece of coax running under our house (none of my antennas are up yet).
Unless we've had a resurgence of ham activity lately, my only conclusion is that the noise level at my new QTH is way, way, WAY better than the old one. There, on a typical weeknight, I could only hear a couple of CW and maybe 1 digital QSOs above the S7-S9 noise.
By comparison, I'm hearing AC2K in Redmond, WA, and he's S8 on this underground antenna, while the background noise level is S0 or S1. I'm getting excited!
From One Operator to Another
13 hours ago
3 comments:
And a few minutes later, I'm copying PP5BI (Brazil), and he's not moving the S-meter. Yes, there is a lot less noise here!
And right now, at 10:00 pm local time, I'm hearing DL2DXA on 14024, and he's S8. Yes, this QTH is a lot better!
And I just worked DL0JK with 50 watts on 14018 at 11:09pm local time. It was rough, but he did give me a 449 and was able to copy my name and QTH, despite some QLF CW on my part.
I don't understand this - how did I just make a 5,700 mile contact using 50 watts into a 50-foot high antenna in the middle of the night? Isn't 20m supposed to close up at night?
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