I should have known that the band was dead tonight when I looked at the bandscope prior to starting the NCS preamble for the Kentucky Emergency Net. Had the band scope — on 50 kHz sweep centered on 3972.5 — been a display on one of the medical beds aboard the starship Enterprise, Doctor McCoy would have said “The band's dead, Jim.”
The scope showed nothing; even the regular band noise seemed low, almost like a flat-line. I didn't scan the entire band for activity because I didn't have time. The band was absolutely dead last week, and I couldn't accept that the band would be that dead again a week later.
It was.
Actually it wasn't completely dead; it was quite long. A ham in Northern Ohio heard me S9 plus; he was 10 over S9 too. I could barely hear some of the usual net check-ins in West Kentucky talking down in the noise among themselves, trying to see who can hear the NCS. By the time I was calling the districts in East Kentucky, I finally recruited the Ohio ham to relay, and he did a bang-up job.
I later tonight listened on 3710 for W4DAN and W4BUD or K4KZA, but had a very weak copy only on Sam and Danny. I didn't try to check in, and they cleared out soon afterward.
I listened at 10 p.m. for KO4OL on the KSN CW net, and the copy was so weak there was no use trying to check in. The band was active with distant signals, so I copied the mail on a few QSOs.
There was a guy apparently running a very old transmitter and trying to get it tuned up; as he was tuning it, the frequency would jump and shift depending on the loading. I followed his signal as it shifted around until he stopped jumping and started calling CQ. A CW net fired up about 500 Hz below his signal, and I didn't answer him; if he moved to a new frequency I was unable to find it.
I tuned down to the low end of the band and heard a Cuban station that reminded me a bit of the old Soviet-era stations with their buzzy signals. He was running along at a pretty good clip, working anyone who called with a short signal report and a 73. I adjusted my McElroy Mac Key Deluxe to more closely match his speed and threw out my call after his next CQ.
Since I was running QSK, I heard another stateside station calling him at the same time. Who would he respond to? I was happy to hear my call come back; we had a short exchange and signed off. I think his call was CM6RCR; he is one active guy, his QRZ lookup total was upwards of 27,000.
I tuned around the low end for more DX stations, but heard only stateside ops, most of which were running higher speeds than I cared to try.
In other FT-2000 news, the only station I worked during the phone SS contest was ARRL contest manager Sean Kutzko, KX9X, on 75. I think that guy has the best job at ARRL HQ!
IC-746PRO RETURNS. My IC-746PRO arrived safely via UPS (something of a miracle if you ask me). I quit shipping things via UPS after one of their authorized shippers here in town told me that our route was used as a training route for new UPS drivers. This was after an HF rig I shipped never showed up in the UPS tracking system for nearly a week — and the buyer was raising 40 tons of hell with me about it. I learned my lesson; I don't ship anything via UPS, not no way, not no how. Parcel Post or Priority, that's it.
WR CEASES PUBLICATION. The Amateur Radio message boards have been discussing the end of World Radio as a print publication. It's an interesting idea for the magazine to move to the web, though I don't know how it can be ad supported in that fashion. Perhaps for CQ, making money on WR content isn't a priority. WR didn't pay much to its writers (short items didn't pay a cent; they paid 50 cents per inch for articles over 15 inches — or $7.50 by my calculations), and it was entirely reader-supported.
I'm surprised they didn't try to sell it; it was printed on newsprint, so it was relatively cheap to produce. Perhaps postage was a factor, since the prices have continued to increase.
This isn't exactly the ideal economic conditions to be trying a new publication, but I think some version of a WR publication, using a similar business model, would fly, provided you could tap into some advertisers. I've got recent copies of Quark and Adobe products; who wants to help me launch a new radio publication? Never Say Die! (with apologies to Wayne Green) …
That's all for this entry … the rig awaits … 73 de KY4Z … dit dit ….