Working 40 Meters

The Good

I listened around on the 40 meter band today.  Keith told me that he often hung out on 7.258 in the MIDCARS Net, so I hung out there starting in mid-morning.  A little before noon, I checked in and got a good report from WX9DX in Illinois.  During lunchtime, I heard Keith on there, so I contacted him.  I got good radio reports from him and from KT4FQ, the Net Control operator at the time located in Tennessee.

A little later in the day, I was tuning around the band and heard "CQ 40 from W1AW portable 5 in Mississippi".  I answered his CQ and had about a minute of conversation with him.  He also said that I had a nice clean signal and that my audio sounded really nice, and he also likes the old Kenwood hybrid radios.

I logged all my contacts in the logbook on my QRZ page.

Throughout the course of the evening I've gotten better at tuning my radio on different bands and using the antenna tuner to provide a good match on 40, 20, and 15 meters.  I tried reaching W1AW/1 in Rhode Island, but that's directly off the end of my dipole so I doubt he ever heard me at all.  He was working quite a pileup though.

Here's a picture of my radio putting out 100 watts with only about 1 watt reflected, on 14.240.

The Interesting

As I tuned around 20 meters, I heard CO4LS in Cuba (just above the static), and I heard VP2VQ in the Virgin Islands (with a nice strong signal).  I heard guys in Montana and Washington and South Dakota and Texas, but all fairly faint.

The Not So Good

I turned the bandswitch to the 10-meter bands and was greeted with silence.  It seems like my radio is deaf on 10 meters.  This is an unexpected problem, and hopefully not too hard to fix.  Maybe it's related to my bad solder joint (that still needs to be fixed); likely it's something else completely.  I hope it's not the bandswitch.

Oh well - more fun tomorrow!

73 de K9MJA