Things started slow Fri evening. Only worked some locals out 100 mi or so. Around 9p the band started to burble to life a bit, worked a couple of southern states a couple VE's and an XE1. At 10p the band burst open to the south (FL,GA,LA, AL, TX etc) Things were slowing down by 11:30 and I decided to call it quits.

Saturday morning I slept in and started operating after 8a sometime. 8-9-10a were all slow, only worked out a couple hundred miles on scatter. Then around 11a the band came alive with strong signals from MO, IL, AR, MN, WI and others. Also worked into Brazil. Had a blast before shutting down at Noon. The band was still open but I had to get ready to go hunting on the last day of rifle season (it's a tradition) After an unsuccessful hunting excursion I got dinner, relaxed a bit and got back on the radio around 7p. I checked my local SDR skimmer server that I kept running while I was away. And boy! Looks like I missed some great openings! Tons of W5's, W6's, W7's, XE's and PY's were heard by my deaf skimmer (it needs a pre-amp on 10M) Oh well... I had fun hunting. Conditions at 7p were El stinko... Really bad.. I mean beyond terrible. wasn't even hearing any locals. Maybe everyone decided to watch TV after the big afternoon opening (that I missed!) Around 7:45p the Southern path opened with good signals. Unfortunately there wasn't any fresh meat and I didn't have the ambition to call CQ. This opening lasted about ½ hour and I made 1 Q. The band went in the crapper again and I decided to watch TV like everyone else around 8:30p.

Sunday morning around 7a I made my way to the shack, got everything powered up only to find the band was dead dead dead. Not a single blip on the waterfall. Did eventually work a few on scatter to the North East. 7:50a the band jumped to life with strong signals from FL, GA, AL etc. This was a stable, broad and strong opening that started to fade and shift to the Midwest around 9:45a. At 10am the Midwest opening was starting to fade. This had me thinking, what is the band doing now? Ya never know where the E cloud is gonna go. For the next hour it bounced around so fast it was hard to keep up with W0, W5, W9, W4, VE, P4, PY... By 11:15a the band was closed, but there was quite a few locals on to work. 11:30a was time for lunch...Back from lunch at 12:30p and there wasn't much happening. Just some stations out 1-200 mi with unusually large meteor scatter burst on them. I decide to lay on the couch and read the Jan QST. 2p I came back from the couch and worked some rare DX, a station in Berwick and Uruguay. Was mostly dead otherwise. Spent the next ½ hour calling a PY that never did get my call correct. 2:30p the couch was calling me again. 3:30p back from the couch, again... Band was wide open to FL with the strongest signals of the weekend but only lasted ½ hour. Over the next hour and ½ the band would burp and spit out a signal from time to time but nothing sustained. By 5:30 things were bleak, the band stopped burping and most of the locals were gone. 6p I threw in the towel.

I'm consistently surprised how much fun can be had with just a couple pieces of wire hung in the air. Even at the bottom of the solar cycle on 10M! Whoda thought.

73,

Pat-W3RGA