RadCom April 2024, Vol. 100, No. 4

56 April 2024 Regulars Solar Activity The sun has been pretty active and the solar flux index (SFI) reached 211 on 12 February. I keep an eye on the daily maximum usable frequency (MUF) on the Propquest website [1] and, even with this level, the MUF hasn’t gone beyond 40MHz, which, whilst not enough to excite 6m fans, has provided excellent conditions on the higher HF bands and the 10m band in particular. 8Q7WR My good friend Keith Haynes, G3WRO was active as 8Q7WR during February whilst on holiday with his partner Marilyn ( Photos 1 and 2 ). Keith ran 100W into a Windom antenna, sited in a NE/SW configuration. He writes: “We were in Kuredu Island Resort. To get there we had an 11-hour non-stop flight to Male, the capital, from London Heathrow and then an additional 40-minute seaplane flight to the island. Upon arrival at Male, we were met and welcomed by Parker Rashid, 8Q7PR – a lovely man who had kindly organised my temporary licence and callsign, 8Q7WR. We arrived on Kuredu on the morning of Wednesday 24 January. Our host on the island was extremely helpful in getting his maintenance crew to assist in the erection of the Windom antenna, literally slung between two palm trees, behind our beach villa. By Friday 26, I was ready to switch on the Icom IC-7300. To my dismay there was a lot of local electrical noise, no doubt from the infrastructure on the island, making operation very difficult. However, all was not lost as 10m was totally clear and that was the band to concentrate on. As our stay on Kuredu was, of course, primarily a beach holiday, operation was going to be strictly one hour per day and the best time ascertained to be anytime after around 4pm local time to sundown. This corresponded with late morning in the UK as Kuredu is six hours ahead of UK time. QSB was a big issue every day, with signals varying very quickly between S9 down to barely readable, making operation quite challenging but nevertheless very enjoyable. Pile-ups were spasmodic but, when they did happen, they were both challenging and enjoyable. Overall, I was operational for a total of ten days and, in that time, given the relatively poor conditions on the 10m band and the fact that I was so far in any direction from large populations of civilisation, I feel I did pretty well and gained an enormous amount of satisfaction from the whole experience. By far the bulk of the stations worked were in Europe, which was DX! It was also lovely to be called from relatively rare entities like A41 for example – generally it is me in Europe trying to call them! One particularly fantastic and surprising QSO was when I heard my good friend (and your scribe here) John, G3YPZ call me on CW – resulting in a cross- mode QSO. I believe the last time I had one of those contacts was way back in the 1960s on top band! On closing down on 4 February, 8Q7WR had made a total of 188 QSOs, all on SSB, and a total of 40 DXCC entities had been worked. The best DX was W5. I had been in touch with 8Q7PR by phone the night before close down and asked if we could try a QSO on the 40m band. Parker was booming through at 59 and the path between Kuredu island and Male was obviously favourable. After our return by seaplane back to Male we were again met by Parker who dutifully handed me a QSL card for the 40m contact, which was a nice touch!” AM I was pleasantly surprised to be called by Carl, EA8/G4GTW on 29MHz on 6 February, off the side of my beam. Turning the antenna led to a 59 report both ways. Carl writes: “Great to make the 10m AM contact with you and what memories it invoked. My current 10m setup is, 25W from my FTDX10 to a full-wave rectangular form wire loop ( Photos 3 and 4 ).” The 10 and 15m bands have been providing good AM QSOs to the USA and Canada in the afternoons. At G3YPZ, using the AR88/DX100U combination, some outstanding QSOs include K6IJ, KL7OF and K7IYP (10m); two QSOs with VE7DXF; and on 16 February with VE6CLG on the 15m band. On 15 February, at 1735UTC, I fired the DX100U up into the single-element quad on 14.330MHz and listened for my signal on the Ashland, Massachusetts KiwiSDR [2] . It was a very readable S6. A quick call resulted in surprise QSOs with IU6PFY, OM0ET, and HA5MIG. I checked the SDR again on 16 February at 10.30am and my signal was S7 on a completely clear frequency at that time in the USA. On 17 February a sked was arranged with Peter, AA3RE (Schwenksville, PA) for a 20m band AM QSO on 14.330MHz at 6.13pm and again at 7.30pm. Good QSOs resulted, although not at the strength of the 15 or 10m QSOs that day. HF PHOTO 1: Keith, 8Q7WR/G3WRO (centre) with partner Marilyn and Parker Rashid, 8Q7PR. PHOTO 2: 8Q7WR lapping up the Sunshine and the DX. PHOTO 3: EA8/G4GTW 10m loop.