30m

It's easy to forget 30m. It's neither to long, nor too short, not too wide, and it's one of those suspicious WARC bands. For me, yesterday, it was the Goldilocks band. I couldn't get much out of 10m, and I didn't want to spend the day on 160m (I tend to drop down there at dusk), so 30m it was.

This is the whole day - from about 9AM until about 9PM 21st December. Operating at 2.5W. Most of the DX heard me, but I didn't hear them (usual poor antenna problems at M0DEV)- but I am perpetually surprised at how well I get out.

I'm running on 30m again today, but this time with 500mW. Clearly, a direct comparison doesn't mean a great deal, but it will be interesting. KK5MR has already spotted me from what appears from his station notes to be a relatively modest setup.

Using WSPR

I thought I'd try using WSPR to work out where to expend my loggable efforts this morning (the WX being fit for nothing else)

Five minutes on WSPRnet maps followed by a quick hour on 40m WSPR convinced me that 40m was a band worth trying. Here is the result of an hour or so this morning, on the 817 at 1W to a LW:

So, I get the better rig out, power about 20W, tune to 7.039MHz (I looked it up on http://hflink.com/jt65/ - I don't often try 40m JT65) and set up a JT65 CQ. Twenty minutes later, I have heard absolutely nothing. Eventually, I fetch up the PSKReporter map and discover three monitors on 40m, but they are all on 7.076MHz.

My bandplan says 7.076 is all modes but excludes digimodes.

Confused.

Anyway, I migrate up to 7.076 and, of course, it's knee deep in SSB. I've got one decode, but I can't see anything clear to TX into.

40m is a mess!