11 Meter Activity Today

[KX5JT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwBqY-OCrP8&feature=related

This has to be the guy who first thought up that bogus P.E.P. power limit Bull Shi'ite for AM.

Still with all this advanced science 11 is often loaded with DX activity when 10 is mostly dead.

Izit the MUF or just shear numbers of operators?

I often wonder the same!

[WB2EMS]

My guess is it's the number of operators, plus I think a number of them run considerable power - often more than amateurs do.

I don't think MUF is a sharp cut off kind of thing, but maybe someone knows better. I suspect if it's hot on 11, there's at least some propagation on 10. I suppose we could check the beacons to be sure. Or make some noise on the band and see who answers.

BTW, I was just mobile and the bands seem really dead today. Another CME?

[KF1Z]

"Ignorance is bliss"

I'll bet you most CBers don't sit around on the computer, checking propagation reports, or clusters etc to
see if it's worth turning on the radio or not, like a lot of hams seem to do.

They just get on and play. If propagation is good, then they'll work DX, if it isn't, they play state to state.

If more amateurs would do the same thing, you'd see more activity.

But nooooo.... if the computer says there's no activity... why bother actually turning the radio on?   

[K1JJ]

Bruce, you are correct that sometimes cornditions are good, but everyone is either just listening or away from the rig. This happens on all bands. I notice it a lot on the 75M DX window too. Then get on and call CQ DX and there's a pile-up...


Speaking of 10M....

In addition to checking 11M, another good way to gauge 10M is to quickly tune between 28.300  and 28.600  looking for USB signals.   Then listen to the callsigns and this will tell the propagation directions.     Just now I took a tune and hear a few weak South American stations and nothing else. For a Sunday afternoon, I wud say the band is broken at the moment.


Cheez....  I sometimes wonder about my timing. About four months ago 10M started popping and sounded like 29.000 was going to get wild on AM.  I spent a coupla of focused months building up a big mono-band 10M linear from scratch and getting the 10M Yagi stack switchable out of phase - even got the RF out of the audio on 10M.  All loaded for bear to hold court and then the band goes soft.  The last time on I sweated just to work  five stations out west and the band folded... sigh.      

It will get better, but I hope this ain't one of those MauanderWus Minimum cycles.    

signed,

"All dressed up in my 15 piece disco duck 10M suit with nowhere to go."

aka  "The Mucus Member" - somewhere in north cold country

[k4kyv]

I'll bet you most CBers don't sit around on the computer, checking propagation reports, or clusters etc to
see if it's worth turning on the radio or not, like a lot of hams seem to do.

They probably don't check out Smith Chart tutorials or the Technical Forum on sites like this one, either.  IOW they don't try to learn anything. As you said, they just get on and play.

If propagation is good, then they'll work DX, if it isn't, they play state to state.

If more amateurs would do the same thing, you'd see more activity.

And the bands would be jam-packed with signals; the bedlam would sound a lot like 11m with all the clueless Hammy Hambones yakking away over their plastic radios... and once again we would see petitions to the FCC for bandwidth limitations and most likely, to outlaw "wasteful" modes like AM.

But nooooo.... if the computer says there's no activity... why bother actually turning the radio on?    

Or if the lightning map shows thunderstorms all over the continent.  

When the bands are dead, not only is there the computer; there are books and magazine articles to be read and digested, on topics ranging all the way from modulation transformers and reactors to transmission line theory and balanced link-coupled antenna tuners.

[Steve - K4HX]

And how many hams do you think read stuff like this?   

They probably don't check out Smith Chart tutorials....

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Bruce, you are correct that sometimes cornditions are good, but everyone is either just listening or away from the rig. This happens on all bands. I notice it a lot on the 75M DX window too. Then get on and call CQ DX and there's a pile-up...


Speaking of 10M....

In addition to checking 11M, another good way to gauge 10M is to quickly tune between 28.300  and 28.600  looking for USB signals.   Then listen to the callsigns and this will tell the propagation directions.     Just now I took a tune and hear a few weak South American stations and nothing else. For a Sunday afternoon, I wud say the band is broken at the moment.


Cheez....  I sometimes wonder about my timing. About four months ago 10M started popping and sounded like 29.000 was going to get wild on AM.  I spent a coupla of focused months building up a big mono-band 10M linear from scratch and getting the 10M Yagi stack switchable out of phase - even got the RF out of the audio on 10M.  All loaded for bear to hold court and then the band goes soft.  The last time on I sweated just to work  five stations out west and the band folded... sigh.      

It will get better, but I hope this ain't one of those MauanderWus Minimum cycles.    

signed,

"All dressed up in my 15 piece disco duck 10M suit but nowhere to go."

aka  "The Mucas Member" - somewhere in north cold country

Looks like right now most of the 10 meter activity between U.S. and S. A. is via TEP. There also seems to be some decent F2 activity between Europe and S. A. As we move into late March and April, and then into Summer, we should see an upsurge in 10 M Sporadic E activity. However, although some Sporadic E activity can last for hours and hours, and sometimes even days, most of the time it can be relatively shorter. Also, Sporadic E ionization, besides coming and going, also tends to move around, allowing openings to a variety of locations. Also, keep an ear open on 6 meters. Sporadic E activity here is always generally hot from the late Spring through the late Summer across the U. S. and between U. S. and Europe.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Still with all this advanced science 11 is often loaded with DX activity when 10 is mostly dead.

Izit the MUF or just shear numbers of operators?

They have one frequency range to play in; amateurs have over 19 different frequency ranges to play at any one time.
"11 is often loaded with DX activity": Most likely because almost everyone operating there relishes in trying to work some distant station whereas there are some amateur groups that are content in old buzzarding for hours on end about the strange speckles on their receiver knobs or what happen to their feedline back in 1952, so DX and band openings are unimportant to them.

[The Slab Bacon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwBqY-OCrP8&feature=related

              

I dont know what he's been smokin, but I want some! !                

[WA1LGQ]

"strange speckles on their receiver knobs or what happen to their feedline back in 1952"

.........thats funny Pete! One of my favorite wastes of radio time is when a gaggle of bullshooters gets to arguing about what the rotation is. And this can go on for hours during the day on 75

[Opcom]

The 11M skip plagued me the entire trip to Denver and back. I was trying to use the CB for the truckers and highway but all day and all night the skip was rolling in. Bunch of jackasses with pills and noise toys. That video by that stupid "CB Guru" highlights only one part of a defective paradigm. But I am not condemning. I realize they can't help it and can't be any better. There is a right way and a wrong way to operate with illegal power on CB. Both are illegal, but if the operators were better educated and disciplined these problems would not exist.

[Opcom]

When the bands are dead, not only is there the computer; there are books...

Amen! the military term for a book, or books plural is "knowledge". The few scanned books on our subjects are fine but there are thousands more on our subject and peripherals thereto that are not available electronically. I pity the coming generations of geeks, engineers-to-be, and hardware hacks that will not inherit a technical library from Uncle Patrick. It's a lament that my only nephew has no interest in electronics.

[k4kyv]

Furthermore, much human knowledge is preserved on acid paper books and magazines, which are slowly deteriorating, first turning yellow and eventually to dust, in a slow but inevitable combustion process. Unless these publications are scanned and saved in digital format or otherwise, within a few decades this knowledge will be lost for ever, like the thousands of volumes once held in the great Alexandria library.

Some issues in my collection of 1930s Radio magazine were like brand new, in mint condition when I first acquired them.  Now, pages have turned yellow, and some are brown around the edges. Time keeps slipping on by; I have now owned them for more years than their total time of existence when I first acquired them in the  late 60s and early 70s.