W4FT on Amateur Radio

With the sun cycle at or near the bottom, 10 meters is a real challenge right now. Last weekend, I spent time on and off trying to make contacts on 10 meters. As you might expect, contacts were few and far between.  But, I thought I’d give it a shot.  At the start of the contest on Friday night, I started tuning around, looking for stations.  Most of the band was dead.  I did make a contact with a station in Virginia, which must have attracted local attention.  My next 4 contacts were all local Raleigh stations.

Over the next two days, I scanned the band, looking for stations, mostly with no success.  Late Sunday, I did find a few more signals, probably from sporadic-E, coming in from Oklahoma, Kansas and South Carolina.  

Ultimately, conditions were just so poor that, except for checking the band occassionally, I didn’t do much.  While these conditions make for a real challenge, I’ve never been interested in sitting for hours, calling out into the ether without response. This was a great contest back in the mid 90′s when I got my license and maybe it will be again when the sunspot cycle peaks again, but this year…. oh well.