"poor"

The propagation tools all describe band conditions today as "poor", and most people seem to have taken heed and disappeared to polish their antennas, or some other diversionary activity.

I turned WSPR on, on 40 metres, and picked up a couple of stations running 50 mW beacons - DL1FX and EA6FG, both pretty regularly throughout the afternoon.

I often intend to drop power but forget - once one beacon has gone off at 2.5W (my normal power) there's no real point in dropping it. Dropping the 817 to 500mW will have to happen soon, just to see what 500mW and a bit of wire in a gutter can really do!

JT65 on 20 metres was eerily quiet. But through the murk, a Taiwanese station closing with a Thai station, then a BX (mainland China) working someone else. I guess this DX would normally be drowned out by the cacophony of QRO European operations. I didn't manage to work them, but was pleased to see them

On a slightly different tack, I worked someone on JT9-1 last night. The conversation went thus at the start:

CQ M0DEV IO82
M0DEV G1AAA XX00 (I've changed the callsign)
G1AAA M0DEV -07
M0DEV G1AAA -10
Now ok, he's missed acknowledging my report, but he's sent a report. Maybe he just clicked the wrong text to send.

G1AAA M0DEV RRR
MY REPORT PSE?
What? Sorry?

I sent the report several times, and the reply was REPORT PSE
and finally RRRRR 73 73


So, I think we're in the bag. An email arrived from him this morning to ask why I never sent a report. He claims I was sending "G1AAA M0DEV"...with no digits on the end.

If you can work out how that happened, I'd love to hear it.

The exchange also underlines the importance of sticking exactly to the agreed protocol when we can't have a proper conversation. If he didn't get my original report, he should have pushed on with

M0DEV G1AAA XX00
until he got it.