22 FEB 97
30 meters is a day-time Band?
Report from HR6\KA2OIG\QRP -- Morgan's Cay, Bay Islands, Honduras
BACKGROUND:
The XYL and I were treated to 10 days of R&R -- we'd been through
the Japanese Embassy "thing" in December. Stay tuned, once the
hostages are all out I'll fill you in on the "inside" radio
story. WHAT, you did not copy that one? -- So we went off to a
quiet place. Having worked in Honduras twice but never having
been to the Bay Islands made it a logical place to go considering
that the "home of record" was Connecticut and it was mid-Feb!
First apologies for the initial mix up was it HR8 or HR6? Then
apologies to the Q-QRP members. Try as I might, I never did hear
any European stations, and these islands were settled by the
British a couple of ways back in the 1700's. Then to the NW-QRP
crowd - I was in there Monday night - sorry no action. Here in
Lima I can hear you from time to time. I did work Mike (W7AJ) 2-
way QRP but just before sunset.
STATISTICS:
Dates 29 Jan to 8 FEB 97
RIG Oak Hills Research - Explorer II 30 meters CW
ANT Dipole about 25-30 feet up in a few Palm trees - horizontal.
PWR Optimum was 4 watts, but dropped considerably when the XYL
turned on the lights!
Solar power via truck batteries
CMOS Super Keyer II
QTH Morgan's Cay, Honduras 16.8 N 86.5 W
States worked: AL AR CA DE DC FL GA IA IL KY OH MA MD MI MN NC
NJ NM NY SC TN TX VA WA WI - BC TI2 & (speaking of QRP o muerte
.... venceremos) CM6.
The Florida contacts (10) were the most frequent and then TN came
in with 7 contacts followed by 6 in OH & TX, then 4 from MN which
I attributed to some sort of a home sensitivity on the part of
the Explorer II from Oak Hills Research! There were some New
Englanders but they were not operating from New England! Only
one came through -- from Mass.
There were 12 2-way QRPs QSOs out of the 73 QSOs
So much for the "statistics" The real fun was in the QSOs and
almost QSOs. Many long QSOs were had and some repeats. One of
the neatest was with Wayne (WB4FFW) in TN -- although we got
QRM'd and had to QSY he took a message for my Mom in Connecticut
and relayed it. She came down and brought all of the goodies
suggested in the message. Then too, the QSO with Jim (K6LM/M) in
Houston while he was mobile and not running much power at all (7
watts to a mobile vertical if I copied well).
My original intent was to check out the gray line. OP-time was
to be sunrise and sunset +/- 1 hour. An here is where the
cultural habits intervene. Yes, about sunrise the band opened,
but part of the phenomenon is that folks get up about that time.
However, the band folded a couple of hours after sunset (23:38
UTC) and that is pretty early for the US so I do not think that
it was a cultural factor there. Moreover, the band stayed opened
during the day and about an hour after my sunrise the traffic
really started to flow and it stayed opened all day. According
to my propagation program, most of the States are only 1 hop away
-- we are dealing with N-S propagation.
DX East to West was a loss (Cuba is closer than Florida so that
is not a test of E-W DX) and I had a clear shot at the horizon in
all directions. Rotating the dipole (many palm trees available)
did not change the SWL -- Nothing to the Far East or West. (I
went into an SWL mode after the voltage dropped at night).
I heard the pile-ups of that "rare DX" but I could not make out
where it was at 22:50 UTC on 6 FEB. Down south I did hear the
fellow in Cuenca, Ecuador (HC5) who is usually on in the evening
and one CE4 station. Costa Rica is South of Honduras, but that
is a half a skip away! There really isn't much CW action on 30
meters here in South America (a fair amount of SSB pirates
though!)
Running solar power -- the house had 3 panels, 2 truck batteries
which had seen better days, and a few light bulbs. After the sun
was up the "system" was supplying 16 Volts! Big fears on my part
so by turning on one of the light bulbs it would drop down to
about 14 Volts. Those were the brighter moments :>{)
The light bulbs were real energy hogs -- they were 12 volters and
only about 25 watts, but had big elements and looked like 120
volt jobs. Come sunset I had to watch the voltage and turn off
the bulbs - fortunately the XYL has a sense of humor and can read
in the dark! I had to use a flash light to read the log. By the
time the voltage dropped to 8 volts the Explorer II let the world
know that things were not happy. It began chirping like mad!
Consistently I got those chirping reports beginning about 10
volts. Also, the Explorer II started hearing chirpy! The first
night I was pretty excited and assumed that all of those chirpy
stations were HB QRP. At those times if a light bulb were on in
the place you could see the "key-down." It also would go into a
bit of an offset. That is, transmit on a lower frequency than
receiving, but, not to fear, the Explorer's RIT handled that.
That is, I'd call CQ and listen down. That is a report on how
well the Explorer II can handle low voltage -- pretty well I
think.
It was a great vacation, the fresh fish was fine.
Next chore is to make some QSL cards and get them out. Next year
I'll wrap up the remaining 25 States!
BTW, I thanked folks who really made an effort to copy me; They
made the effort I just pushed the memory "CQ-CQ-CQ" button on the
keyer.
One closing comment on Antennas. Here in Lima I've been using a
vertical mounted on the roof at about 50 + meters. In
preparation for the trip I made a full-sized dipole and hung it
as a sloper off the roof down toward the parking lot. Both are
resonant. Guess what? Both have vertical polarization, but the
dipole was not only an "S-unit" above the vertical, it brought
out signals which the vertical did not even have "in the mud."
Viva QRP! Arriba con los dipolos!
72
Kris
OA4DBO (KA2OIG is my US callsign)
ARCI 7272; MI 537; G-QRP 5951; NWQRP 212
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