Yes its "normal" in a general sense. Every year will present opportunities if you are well equipped and at the right place at the right time. As a kid I worked a fair amount of double hop Es from Ohio to the West coast on AM. You should be able to to do likewise. The same for KP4 etc. Triple hop propagation requires that both parties be well set up with substantial power and antenna(s). I worked ZP6VT 0n 4/14 of last year at 1857Z. He never peaked above 54 and was in for less than five minutes. This was in the middle of an intense N-S opening to TI, YV, 9Z4, KP4 etc. KD4ESV in EL87 posted a 6m. contact to Argentina (Uruguay?) a couple of weeks ago during an intense Es opening on 10m. Could you have made either contact with 100W and 5 elements? Probably not but so what when you are having fun? Ron:
Ron, Didn't have any luck in Roswell, NM except I did snap a shot of the moon this morning over Roswell. Now it's on to another spot. Probably set down near San Antonio, TX and continue to search for aliens there... RRK
I've mentioned up thread my 6m FM work with my VX-7 and a j-pole. However, the j-pole is just too bulky for light & fast work, such as while running or biking, so I started poking around for EFHW info. Turns out, there have been some EFHW antennas made. Par makes an EndFedz model and RadioPrepper on YT has done some work in that area. Even better, he made a transformer using a mix 61 toroid, of which I have a few size 50 ones in my junk box. So, yesterday, I made a 1:49 transformer using an FT50-61 toroid and 14 turns of 28awg magnet wire. A quick tune up using 9.5' of wire shows I can get a sharp dip at 52.525 when trimmed correctly. I solidified the build and now have a 6m antenna that fits in the palm of my hand. I need to re-tune it after making a few tweaks, but once that is done, I'll give it a shakedown run at a SOTA activation. I'm going to do two 10 pointers in the VA mountains early next month (Reddish Knob and Flagpole Knob), so if I don't get a chance to deploy it before then, that will be the date. I can deploy it in a number of configurations, but for FM work, I'll hang it vertically with the transformer at the bottom. I may add a jumpered section to bring resonance down to the AM Simple range since my VX-7r also does 6m AM. Chris
Chris my tentative plan is to head down Skyline from Hawksbill and South this coming Sunday-Monday hopefully we’ll make some 6m QSOs!
