#6m propagation to South America

 

Earlier this week I've seen some Argentinian stations. This time there were plenty PY stations with signals till +1dB on FT8 at sunset. I've also been spotted at D4 (Cape Verde). Of course it was very busy with a lot of callers. I've managed just one QSO with PY and one with CU2 (Azores). This is the time you should monitor the magic band more often, especially in the greyline times. I hope some propagation to the USA/Canada will occur soon.

#CQ WPX CW contest 2026 review

   Unfortunately this contest is held at an inconvenient time of the year. Propagation on HF at this time of the year is not that good and there is lots of noise all around. Besides that there are many chores in and around the house, mostly garden work and maintenance of the house. So, I didn't want to spend much time in this contest. At saturday I had the radiomarket in Beetsterzwaag and when I came back my sister visited us when she juist arrived back with her camper in the Netherlands after she spend a long time in Hungary. After all that I was tired and didn't want to setup for the contest. Sunday morning I managed to setup N1MM for the WPX CW contest and immidiatly got intimidated by the high speed CW calls. But I managed to make a few QSOs after all. Then other chores needed to be done and I returned late in the afternoon just before dinner. I decided to make it till 75 QSO's after dinner and stopped. Overall propagation was not to good. It was difficult or impossible to hear any cluster spots at all so I went back to tuning by hand, real S&P. DX was rarely heard, most of the contacts were inside Europe. I think it was a good decision to spend limited time at this contest.

All the contacts made. After all some DX was workable.

My quest to learn CW (30)

  Already my number 30 blogpost about learning CW. I wonder when I will be at a point I don't find it important to report about it anymore. I'm in my 3th year of learning and still train almost every day. Most times with LCWO but use other software as well. Once and a while when time permits I make CW QSOs if I feel confident enough to make them. Sometimes QSOs are going very well and at other times I mess up completely. I still can't follow a normal CW QSO when listening on the bands. Only a few words and that's it. Although I have the feeling I'm doing well in LCWO. How is my training going now...

Concentrating on random letters + numbers + .?,/ codegroups doing lesson 40. Training goes up and down. Overall I get a score between 70-80%. Speed now is 28/20 wpm. I wish I could do this with a score of 80-90% but it doesn't happen. Today I'm at 156 attempts in 101 days. I guess te only thing I can do is going on. It will happen some day.

Plain text training and word training is more important. I see a slow improvement in the last weeks. With a speed now of  28/22 wpm I reach between 70-100% score. Depending of the words used. I pick up more and more words, also longer words like "never" and "over".

After 445 attempts I reached an average accuracy of 86,1%. I promised myself I will go up in speed (28/24 wpm) when I reach 90% average. Last month I was on 85,4% so the improvement is really slow but at least it happens.

This weekend there is the CQ WPX CW contest. Time to make some CW exchange QSOs. This time I will use my own call since it is more unique as my contestcall PA6G. Luckily I can choose. I will try to participate for a few hours on Sunday.