Another good little session on 30m last night resulting in a few nice RTTY contacts, especially a good long chat with Yngve (LA5FH) where we exchanged thoughts on how different programs for digimodes implement macros.
Before moving to RTTY I had spent a while working a few PSK31 stations and again (as was the case the night before) it was confined to European stations. However, I do often check the PSK Reporter* website to see where I have been heard. As you can see from the screenshot below most stations reporting hearing me were within Europe but I was also heard over 14,000km away in Perth, Australia, by VK6GOS (CQ zone 29, one of only 3 zones I still need towards a ‘Worked All Zones’ award).
Another sign that conditions were pretty good again…?
Screenshot of PSK Reporter 30m spots for G0RIF on 5th May 2010
* PSK Reporter automatically gathers reception records of PSK activity and then makes those records available in near realtime to interested parties. They can also be viewed on a map as seen in this screenshot.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures 30m, PSK31
…seemed to be in pretty good shape. The sunspot number of 70 certainly helps. More please sun gods!
I was initially intent on working some PSK31 just to see what came along in response to my CQ calls but before I could get started I noticed JD1BLY (on Ogasawara) spotted down around 10.1055 MHz so I had a quick listen. Nothing heard. Maybe next time.
Having checked out the CW part of the band I tuned up beyond the PSK31/63 signals around 10.141MHz and checked out the top end of 30m where RTTY is usually found. I found a few signals but was intrigued by a station (with a good 59+ signal) dishing out rapid fire 599 reports to a run of Asian stations and apparently working split. After a short wait he identified himself as ZA/OK7RY in Albania, which although not a new one for me is not all that common. I set up a 1kHz split and tried to get a contact but nothing doing. He just seemed to be getting through a succession of Japanese stations with the odd Russian thrown in, and a South Korean for good measure.
As luck would have it though for some reason he suddenly started working stations simplex, when it got a bit chaotic on his frequency as a number of EU stations started sending their callsign, but I got lucky and worked him within a few calls. Maybe not an all time new one but a new one on 30m!
I then moved on to PSK31 where it seemed that as good as conditions were they were favouring short skip because there were many EU stations operating PSK31 with good solid traces showing little fading and with relatively low noise levels. I set about calling CQ and was rewarded with a few nice long QSO’s with CU7CL, 9A8W and LZ1HK before turning off and calling it a night.
Dean Amateur Radio 30m, PSK31, RTTY