The Bands

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The past couple of mornings have been a bit frosty so I decided on the Car rather than Motor Cycle to get to work which worked out well as I've heard some great signals coming in on 20m from VK - Australia and  JA - Japan. The distant DX Stations usually start coming  through well up here from now until around late February time. I use the trusty little Toyota 4 X 4 to get through the winter months and at the same time I get more radio time in to operate my FT-100 mobile Ham Station. For the time being, the Motorcycling will be used solely for pleasure when the WX is more reasonable avoiding any unpleasant accidents.

Back in the Shack, the past two evenings have been a different story as by the time I get back from work the 20M band has closed down and 40M has not been particularly exciting either. So I have been tuning down on 80M instead and having fun working European Stations on SSB using the recently made home brew 130 ft dipole. I have been getting good reports from the dipoles performance which consists of two equal legs at 65 ft made from 2.0 mm multi stranded copper wire, which is fed with 25 feet of 350 Ohm ladder feeder, terminating at a home made choke into 50 Ohms Coaxial cable (RG58 Heavy). The radio that I have been using with the dipole on 80M is the FT-767GX from Yaesu, I worked some nice Ops such as German Club Station - DL0WER with Andy (DL1BI ) behind the Mic. Other 80M QSOs included, PA3FAO, HA6FQ & ON100PES . ON100PES is a special event Station that is celebrating 100 years since the first Belgian expedition/research station made it to the Antarctic. I always enjoy working the Club Stations and special event Call Signs that are found on the 80M band. 

Thats all for now hope to hear you somewhere on HF soon, I will be active on the SATs also as usual. 73 thanks for the visit.

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