I did not have any contacts with Irish Island on 80 meter until today. And now within 20 minutes: There was a pileup at GI4DOH, almost gave up after struggling for more than 15 mins - but finally worked out. An other interesting contact this evening with Tilen, Slovenia - S52OW, enjoy the good music!
Mounted a couple of the do-dads... Coil shortened horizontal dipole and a Channel Master digital TV antenna.
Today is a wonderful radio day. Let me remind you, CW, trap vertical and 100W only. First, I made QSO with CX5FK and HS3NBR on 20-ty. Then a ten opened a little and I made a couple of dozen QSO. Almost immediately I received two emails on the results of the QSO. It was very sweet. I felt real ham radio spirit.
Yikes. I just checked on FT8 on 15m and there is the below pic for signals. A weekday.... like 20m on a weekend.
OK, now I give up... I went back to that &#@ attick, and changed the Windom folding (it is folded as there is no enough room for the total wire length) to be mainly directed to the North. Outside of the Southern part of my roof there are the solar panels with their grounded massive metal support, so I guess it would act as a reflector, therefore the lobes mainly point to North. I checked the 40 meter band RBN, and I got amazing SNR figures back from all the Nordics like Iceland, Sweden, Germany etc. Until now I had great QSOs with... Slovenia, Serbia, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria... all from the South... none from the North. All of them are coming back with 599-579 reports. That is what I love in HAM radio. Best game ever.
