#6m #4m ES-season 2026 review

 A small review about the magic band(s) this year. I didn't have much time to monitor all the time and so I probably missed some DX. I know of one evening there was strong propagation to Colombia and Ecuador but although I saw stations with very good signals I was not able to make any QSO. The propagation was widespread across Europe so I was certainly not the only one calling at that moment, sometimes some spotty propagation is better if the spot is right at your QTH. Well, there is always a next time. 

Photo from M0OXO.com

13-May-2026: Quite early in the ES season I worked the first 6m new one this year, XT2AW from Burkina Faso. What can I tell. Signals were reasonable strong and the contact was easy. Working stations on 6m from Africa is always kind of unique.

On the first day of June we had some propagation to South America. June is always the best month for the ES season as far as I know and experienced.

8-Jun-2026: Almost as expected I worked OE3FVU as my only new one on 4m this year. The signal came up, we made the contact and as fast as it appeared it went into the noise again.

20-June-2026: Second new on 6m. This time FS/K9EL from St.Martin. It shows the importance of watching the greyline. Most of my DX has been made at evening greyline including this one.

27-June-2026: A warm day full of good propagation. In the end I managed to work Haïti which was my 3rd and last 6m new one this year. 

Overall there were some DX possibilities but as always it is the magic that has to happen at the time that we are on air.

Bloggers blogroll still broken

 

Some of you probably noticed that something is wrong with the blogroll at te right part of this blog. After Mike VE9KK wrote me an e-mail I noticed that it is not updating with new feeds. Mike and others with a "blogger" blog experience the same problem. Unfortunately it is a problem that google has to solve. We cannot fix this ourselves. I hope this will be solved soon.

Online hamclocks for browsers

 Originally the famous HamClock was invented and hosted by Elwood WB0OEW. You could build one yourself and use his software to run on for example a small RaspberryPi. You could also buy a ready to use device. Personally I made my own version a while ago and ran it via Wifi to view it on any computer or tablet. It was a fun project but I loved it and hated it. I never got it stable and as soon as it need an update I had to start the RaspberryPi again. I also barely looked at it actually. Unfortunately Elwood died at the start of this year and his hamclock back end server would stop. Luckily quickly there were several projects to get another back end server online, probabely openhamclock is the most wel known one now.

These days there are also very nice online hamclocks online which work well in your browser. Some are very good usable some are less usable. It's just what you are looking for. I recently made a list of some interesting online hamclocks to use on any computer with a browser and internet connection.

One of the monitors featuring hamdash

Recently I got a few HP Pro 3520 computermonitor with build in computer. They came from my job and they wanted to throw them away. They are not the fastest computers with Intel Core i3 processors and old harddrives. But fast enough to run a linux version with all features on it. Including of course the famous FireFox browser. I tried several linux versions but found Ubuntu the best and the most complete. Since I want the screens controllable with only a mouse I needed an on screen keyboard which is not always an option in every linux distribution but is standard in Ubuntu.

Here is my list of interesting online hamclocks:

https://hamclock.me/

https://openhamclock.com/

https://hamdash.com/

https://dxclock.com/web.html

https://dxlook.com/

Personally I have no room for another monitor, so I want to sell them if anyone is interested. They could be used for anything of course. Not only as a hamclock.