11 meter is very quiet?

[Brother DXer]

Super quiet today, but the golden hour kicked in. The past few nights I've got some good dx for about an hour between 7:00 and 8:00.
Tonight has been better then most this week. Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana, and still going.

 

[BC Coyote]

E skip season is in full force up here the last few days.
Pretty much the whole part of North America west of the Rockies starting daily around mid morning and fading out late in the evening. Skip has been in as late as 11pm some nights. Making tons of contacts the last few days in multiple western states, all at super strong signal levels.

I love that about E skip.........it's always "armchair" copy ! No straining the ears ! 38 seems to be the place to be; some activity on the uppers and 555, but 38 has really been hopping, and the idiots seem to have disappeared all together. Or more likely, they are just not getting out and have become mud-ducks or worse........

Australia and New Zealand also heard at good levels every afternoon and evening.
I'm really surprised how well conditions have recovered after the big solar storm. There was an X8.7 flare yesterday, so it will likely be a radio blackout again tomorrow and/or the 17th.

 

[Eldorado828]

How are conditions working for you fellas? I haven't been on ssb for about a month, Texas heat will kill a radio in a car all day so I've taken out the quad 6. Depending on what you folks say I may throw it in tomorrow and call cq.

 

[unit_399]

We have had non-stop thunderstorms every day. Our farm is totally saturated. Only a couple of dry hours a day, and usually my receive is dead then. Today I went down to the shack at noon. Nothing but stations so deep in the mud that someone with bionic ears couldn't pull them out. I did hear the music clown. Barely. He was on every channel from 35 thru 40. As I switched from one channel to the next, the music never skipped a beat. I think he's running FM with really wide deviation. Luckily in my location his signal is so weak that he never blocks my ears. Forecast for tomorrow . . . Rain. Again.

J.J. 399

 

[jrd426]

Not as wet here JJ but damp with much rain overall. A break in the crap weather ahead for the next week ish. Hoping dx picks up again with the change to nicer weather. 73
Jeff 426 Ontario, Canada

 

[nomadradio]

And I was thinking about selling that circuit board on fleabay. As a kit, mind you.

Selling it assembled and working just strikes me as risky.

Can't remember anyone getting fined for selling a kit.

Called it the "Nuke Duke" when it was first developed.

Pretty simple, really. It injects a 10 kHz square wave into the radio's VCO varactor diode. Uses a 10.24 MHz crystal just like the one in the radio. Oddly enough that frequency can be bought in quantity cheap.

This creates a "clone army" of identical AM signals spaced exactly 10 kHz apart.

Naturally it spreads the RF power across all those separate frequencies. 4 Watts across 40 channels is 1/10 of a Watt per channel. The banjo guy must be running a lot more than that. A SDR "spectrum" display shows what's going on. Not a waterfall, but the traditional spectrum-analyzer presentation.

The strategic reason for this to exist is to fuzzify the channel you're listening to. An aggravator with a normal radio can only plug your ears on one channel at a time. The guy who first asked for this is on a mountain that looks down on half this state and parts of surrounding ones. Got tired of his ears getting plugged by grumpy rivals. If you're being heard on a couple dozen or more channels, this offers no hint about the channel where you're listening. Finding the right channel to jam is pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

And no, he's not the one with the banjo music. That's someone else intent on plugging HIS ears. Seems there are lot of hard feelings in that part of the country.

73

 

[whiteastro]

Not much radio going on but have been hearing Jamaica Radio breaking thru once in a while. Worked like some wild young man on a landscape project today and the Kubota made me proud. Back to rain tomorrow before I can carry on.

 

[c316buckeye]

will have to look into E skip. i haven't been at this ssb business for very long, but studied heliophysics a bit. does the sun flipping it's magnetic poles mid cycle make all the conditions migrate to the southern hemisphere? using the MUF map, we are lucky to hear jamaica in the morning here in ohio lately.

 

[Shadetree Mechanic]

Heard Witch Doctor from the Hummingbird Island, West Indies yesterday. Haven't heard him in a long time.

 

[YardDog]

Just hear WDX-1863 on 38lsb but couldn't break through the pile up.

 

[AmericanEagle575]

Just hear WDX-1863 on 38lsb but couldn't break through the pile up.

Sorry we couldn't make contact with each other,made contact with 2 South Carolina station's ( UDX 483,Unit 948) and a station out of Florida (Unit 45), thought I would fire up the Ranger for a little bit before I leave for lunch with my Dad and my Son and daughter, conditions are booming up here in Central Pennsylvania this Morning...........

73's

 

[BC Coyote]

Dead here today. Really funny conditions lately.........it was pretty quiet all day yesterday too, and then at 9:30 last night the whole west coast lit up with contacts in California, Utah, Idaho and Arizona all with big signals. Then at 11:30 it died out as fast as it started!
I'll take a two hour opening over nothing at all, that's for sure!
Unusual to have a dead band all day and then have it come to life at night. Kind of the opposite of the usual.

 

[c316buckeye]

Dead here today. Really funny conditions lately.........it was pretty quiet all day yesterday too, and then at 9:30 last night the whole west coast lit up with contacts in California, Utah, Idaho and Arizona all with big signals. Then at 11:30 it died out as fast as it started!
I'll take a two hour opening over nothing at all, that's for sure!
Unusual to have a dead band all day and then have it come to life at night. Kind of the opposite of the usual.

i read with past solar events, it's taken a couple weeks for everything to settle back down. we keep wondering why folks were so excited for solar max. when every time we get any noteworthy solar activity, conditions are mostly wasted north of 40°lat. people in 3 division have been happy

 

[unit_399]

Finally a sunny day and no rain. Skip was so-so in the afternoon and dead in the early evening. Went down to the shack to turn off the lights and lockup around 9:30. Nothing on SSb, but AM skip was rockin.' Every channel from 1 - 25. I jumped in on a quiet spot on CH 18 and hooked up with "Cornbread 424" in Northeast Georgia. My old stompin' grounds before we moved here. We lived in Habersham county, and he is in Stephens, one county over. After we finished, the channel lit up, and I talked to stations in Alabama,, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Had a good long Qso with an old friend, "James KR66," outside of Tupelo Mississippi. Signed off about 10:15, posted this and hit the bed.

J.J. 399

 

[whiteastro]

Finally a sunny day and no rain. Skip was so-so in the afternoon and dead in the early evening. Went down to the shack to turn off the lights and lockup around 9:30. Nothing on SSb, but AM skip was rockin.' Every channel from 1 - 25. I jumped in on a quiet spot on CH 18 and hooked up with "Cornbread 424" in Northeast Georgia. My old stompin' grounds before we moved here. We lived in Habersham county, and he is in Stephens, one county over. After we finished, the channel lit up, and I talked to stations in Alabama,, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Had a good long Qso with an old friend, "James KR66," outside of Tupelo Mississippi. Signed off about 10:15, posted this and hit the bed.

J.J. 399

Good for you, I'm happy you had some luck. I heard some activity in my mobile yesterday but couldn't get anyone to come back to me. It gets frustrating at times !
LOL