Friday, June 22, 2018

PE4BAS goes 2m!

Had some hobby time again last evening. The idea was to dismantle the copertape vertical or to install the 6m beam, or both. But on the longest and first day of summer.....it rains. So, radio left. But no propagation on 6. Since the W2000 antenna does 2m as well I reached for my Daiwa CN-103 UHF/VHF SWR meter and switched over to 144.174 MHz USB FT8. Just for fun! UHF/VHF is not really my piece of cake. Anyway, SWR is 1:1,4 very good. I switched on TX with 20W and at my first TX period DJ1AN (150km) came back for a QSO. And later I had a QSO with PD7WL (244km). Not bad. It surprised me I was received in Denmark and France. So, far there was noticeable ES at all this evening.

4 comments:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, dat geleuter op 2 meter FM ben ik allang zat. Al jaren doe ik daar niets meer aan. Nu met FT8 wordt het wel weer interessant om op 2 meter uit te komen. Met mijn vertical op 2m Schotland gewerkt. HF is altijd mijn ding geweest, maar om de zoveelste Rus of Italiaan te werken op 20m is wel minder leuk. Ik zoek wel altijd de hoogste band op, op de randen van de MUF om te kijken wat mogelijk is. 73 Paul PAØK

John AE5X said...

Good morning Bas,

No propagation on 6m yesterday? We had amazing conditions here to EU in the morning and JA in late afternoon. Like you, VHF isn't really my thing either but to see conditions like they were, it was hard to stay away from the radio!

73 - John AE5X

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, dat MUF opzoeken doe ik automatisch ook wel. Net zoals een beetje bijzondere stations. 2m FM is ook echt niet mijn ding. Maar met FT8 is het wel weer een uitdaging...73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, well europe is bigger then my small country. You wll notice differences between northern europe and the southern part. It looks like south europe gets more of the 6m propagation to the USA. How further you are north how more difficult it gets. The problem is that I see all those stations from the south making DX QSO's when we do hear or see no DX at all. It actually happens right now the same time as I write this post. I see stations, but only from PA and DL, they make QSO's to CT, EA and even SP. I don't see anything at all. Though I might do better if the 5 element beam is up. 73, Bas