What kind of minimum is this?

CQ WPX gave me a lot of fun last weekend. Lot of DX worked especially in upper bands, 15m and 10m. It was better than BARGT. The only area that was missing was NA. South America, South Africa and Far East delivered very good signals simultaneously during mid day. I will give you some examples.

10m

ZS5NK, 3DA0EI, D69XCLU1HF, CQ9K, PP5AMP, YB0IR, 5R8FU, A52AM

15M

B7M, 9N7JO, A52AM, VQ9LA, 9M8Z, 9V1YC, D44AC, TU2CI, ZP5MAL, XR3P

It is a matter that is very welcome but it also needs a kind of analysis. Unfortunately I am not a specialist. The minimum of the 23 circle! No spots at all in the sun! But still upper bands wide open. Is it new or it happened again before? And what have we to expect when the new circle 24 arises?

After all this recent activity we have great expectations for good propagation conditions from Swain Island next week. Vangelis, SV2BFN and the other guys of the gang start their long trip on Wednesday 28 of March to LA, Hawaii and Swain. Last step by a boat will be 24h long. The schedule for launch is 4 of April. Keep tuned at their page. Have a nice trip to all. We are waiting to hear you on the air. Enjoy your pileups!

On the road again

A minor operation of hernia kept me out of radio activity for several days. As I already said 2007 did not start smoothly. Several failures of the rig and the operator of the station gave general truble and turned shack quiet. Now I am back again and I hope that we have finished with surprises for this year.

I realy enjoyed BARGT contest this weekend. It was a very interesting come back. Even in the minimum of 23 solar circle I met and worked a lot of DX stations, like LU,CX, ZM,JA,E21,YB, HL, ZS and others. But most of all I was happy to work the famus station of ON4UN. It was a a fresh air for me and very recovering all this activity in RTTY for 48 hours.