First QSOs of 2011

The first two days QSOs have been easy, if it’s like this all year then it’ll be a breeze!

I still don’t have much experience in HF propagation so I still don’t really know what to expect but the bands seem to have been in a fairly good way over the last couple of days.

Eager to start early, I was on the wireless just after midnight on the 1st January and spoke to YT3PL in Serbia on 40m and then had a very quick QSO with a couple of UK stations on 80m before turning in to bed at around 01:00.  Later in the day I spotted activity on 10m so had a tune around and managed one quick QSO to EA1GAR in Spain before the band flattened itself again.  Later in the evening on the run up to midnight I worked E79D, Dal in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 40m which ended the day nicely.  I also persuaded my son to have his first HF QSO and he worked Dal as well.

Today, 2nd January I did a similar thing and as I was still awake at midnight I worked into Latvia on 40m before I went to bed.  During the day I had my first ever QSO on 17m (18MHz) although it was a struggle for IS0RXF to get my callsign he managed it in the end.

I’m hearing a lot of European stations calling “CQ DX to North America” and I feel it’s a shame that they’re effectively stopping smaller EU stations from working them.  I’m happy to talk to anyone and don’t feel that I want to limit myself so it’s certainly not something I think I’d ever do.

Tomorrow I’m planning on setting up my 30m QRSS transmitter kit so there’s a vague possibility I could be squirting some slow CW into the ether in the evening.

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  1. Noticed your qso-a-day project. It occured to me that the RSGB or some other group should do an open QSO365 – with no dupes (per month) and no DX advantage. Have a monthly leading, cumulative leading and overall leading. The weakness in my idea might be that .. if qsos were limited to 1 per day it would take ages before any obvious leader(s) showed (how would you list them?) and if it were open to >1 qsoperday then contesters would skew the results.
    Just some thoughts.. Good luck & hope to work you in UKAC

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