As band conditions fade in and out today with the solar storm, we have been forced to move to FT8. I made 8 SSB contacts and tried for a few hours. I was not successful on CW, with signals fading in and out faster than I (or my computer) could reliability decode.
FT8 has been up and down as well. Stations picked up this afternoon and I have had a constant stream of 3 or 4 stations hunting me on 17 meters. Tony had a crazy satellite pass on RS-44. So it has a good trip so far, just not the QSO count we were hoping for.
We did deploy one of our backup wire antennas as Tony’s Super Antenna vertical was okay for 10 and 12 meters, but wasn’t doing enough for any other band. The random wire into a 1:9 unun up about 20 ft (to the tree in the photo below) is working well. It tunes up on 80 and 160 meters, so might try those tonight!
Overall a pretty fun trip so far. More frequent updates on the various spotting networks and twitter!