All Things HF…
Another month of low sunspot numbers, low solar index numbers, high A &K numbers, can anything else go wrong? If you don’t sit down at your station to give operating a try…this is wrong. Yours truly had an interesting month of HF operating and a whole lot of fun doing it. Example, I worked Macau (XX) on CW and Hawaii (AH) today the 20th and in-between, lots of good QSO’s around the US and Canada. There are many resource websites that can help you make the decision of where do you want to go today. WM7D’s Solar Resource page will give you the latest data on SFI and sunspot numbers. Its my very first stop of the day. I don’t get into the deep scientific stuff, just the numbers that tell me what to expect when I hit the foot switch. If you’re looking for the latest DX spots, take a look at the Japanese web sight ‘dxscape’ that I’ve been using for years and find to be one of the best for DX spotting. Now here’s the best resource of all…its you! Get on the air and enjoy this hobby of operating HF radio, meet new people every day. Work new countries…the bands are not great but its out there waiting for you to either work DX or just a heart warming QSO. Take a page out of Nike’s book and ‘just do it’. Here’s the tip of the day for those of you that are newly licensed and have HF privileges: DXpedition operators use a split frequency…please listen before you try to work them. He’s transmitting on one frequency and listening on another…he does not operate simplex. Listen for his instructions of how far up he’s listening. Go to your operators Manuel and it’ll show you how to split your VFO or better yet…get one of the club’s old timers and pick his brain. When the DX operator says ‘listening up’ you can bet its 5-10 up on SSB. If its CW he most likely will be listening 1 up. Remember to sit down at your station and call CQ because someone somewhere is listening for your signal. So long for now from Huntersville.

73 es gud DX de Bob/W0ZPE