Antenna damage...

 When looking out of the window this morning I noticed something was wrong with the 4m/6m duoband antenna. 

Half of the 4m reflector was missing. We had some large winds last night with heavy windgusts, very unusual for this time of year. It looks like the wind has found the weakest point. It is no problem to repair but takes time I do not have at the moment. The weather forecast is not as good either. 

Found the missing part between our garden and our neighbour just at the border. But can't use it anymore. Bought a new tube today. I found a solution to make it mechanically stronger and probabely have to work on all radials in time. 

Of course, now the antenna is out of order, we will have amazing ES propagation in the next few days...

F2 propagation on 10m at midnight

 Although I monitor 10m/6m quite often to detect some ES propagation there is still almost nothing to hear/see. However I got some reports that 10m (11m) does open at almost the middle of our night (22 UTC). And indeed I can report I catched such an opening last night.

I managed to make one QSO with NP3DM from Puerto Rico. And saw others making QSOs with Chile. Signals were quite good at times. But it seems to be one way. Besides that my receive is far better as my transmit coverage. Or you can see it another way.....most stations do not have a good receive possebility.

This morning 10m was open to Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. I managed 2 QSOs with Indonesia. Slowly we get some better propagation now. But to make a proper SSB QSO we probabely have to wait for about 2 weeks. However, you never know.....you can't predict everything.

An evening on 17m

 Not a band I'm on very often. But today it seems to be open very well. After listening on 6m, 10m, 12m and 15m without hearing (seeing) anything I finally stayed on 17m this evening.

Normally I see that pink blob around my QTH. But today it went a whole other way, to the USA. I was even heard (seen) on the North Cook Islands. The list of QSOs was almost endless. Stations kept coming to my CQ. Never experienced that before on 17m. Antenna is my multiband vertical on top of the tower. I used 100W FT8.