The AM Forum

The last few days, from about 08:00-11:00 (AM) 10M AM has been wide open to Western Europe. Most activity is from 29.00 - 29.050. Throttled back my Flex 6500 to ~5W. Yesterday, I worked about 20 different stations, including one station in Iceland. No one was running more than 25W ! The band seems to shut down before noon here in NJ.

Interesting by-product of using and SDR radio. Many of the stations in the EU are using some vintage transmitters. Each has their own significant "drift" when they key the transmitter. Tey stand out on the waterfall like a fingerprint.

I also broke out my old Radio Shack HTX-10. Worked about 15 countries on SSB. And they say, the propagation will only get better!

Side note for QIX, G8NOF was praising Steve's mod monitor!

Heard you on 10 HI HI FB Om the other morning via ground wave (not backscatter) here in upstate NY. Only have a ricebox on 10 at the moment. If I get the Johnson 122 VFO to calm down a bit I'll fire up the modded Viking-II. Either that or grind a few 40 meter xtals for it. I could run the Johnson Kilowatt there but I leave it on 75.

Use the rice box with an attenuator to drive the xtal socket!

10 is hotter than fish grease.

One thing I've noticed is during the morning I don't hear ANYTHING.  It's not a noise level thing, I can drop the noise to S3 but there just aren't any signals.

Around noon, they come booming in!

And this is all bands, not just 10.

Maybe it's a being close to the equator thing?

But yeah, I brought the Hr2600 out, 10 is amazing right now.

--Shane
WP2ASS / ex KD6VXI

Just had a nice QSO from the Volvo with the 7100 and a Hamstick
with Tim WA5TGK on 29050 AM.  Tim had a wall to wall and tree top
tall 20 over 9 signal up here in CT from Allen,TX.  Also worked over to
Portugal on AM from the mobile yesterday on 29040.  Band has indeed been hot, always like the old saying
been open to Texas, based on a beacon on 28280 that comes
in solid all during the day here.  Need more AM activity, cmon
up!