Scratching my head

As I've said before - propagation, she is a crazy thing!

I've mentioned before where K6JSS, the official call sign of the QRP-ARCI will be sent into the ionosphere from all 50 states this year, in honor of the club's Golden Anniversary.  So far this year, the club call sign has been active from Connecticut, where I managed to work Ed W1RFI as K6JSS/1, and Hawaii, where I managed to work Max KH6MZ was K6JSS/KH6.

This week the host state is Georgia and I have been having a devil of a time!  40 Meters is nice and quiet - but LOONNNGGGGG !!!!!  For example, tonight I am hearing LZ2VU from Bulgaria much more easily that K6JSS/4.  80 Meters will probably be the "go-to" band; but has it been super noisy this winter!

Regular readers of this blog will probably remember  a few years back, where 40 Meters was useless to me as I had some tough local QRN problems on that band.  For those couple of winters, 80 Meters was my oasis from the noise.  I had great success operating and got quite a bit of success in the 80 Meter QRP Foxhunts.  This year, everything seems to have been turned upside down.  40 Meters is the quiet band - but is extremely long.  I'm having no problems working Europeans and out towards the far Mid-West and the West coast.  But southeast towards Georgia and Florida which used to be a pipeline?  Nada!  Meanwhile, it seems that every time I go to 80 Meters, I am presented with a ton of background noise.  80 Meters is sounding a lot like I am used to hearing in July instead of January.

The final push for K6JSS/4 from Georgia is tonight, tomorrow and Sunday.  I am going to try like the dickens to get them in the log.  I probably won't be lucky to work all 50 different K6JSS stations, but I am going to give it the old college try to work as many of them as I can.  Besides, what else do I have to do this weekend?  Not much as it's supposed to be deep freeze time.  Both tomorrow and Sunday nights, the forecasted low temperature is supposed to fall below 0 degrees F (that's -17 C or colder) !

Stay warm!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!