Yet another beautiful day in the Algarve … ! With this weather you just cannot resist and go out for another activation. So I went to Barrocal, a large protected area with plenty of spots to choose from. I decided to try the most South-Western part of the park as it is closest to where I stay. On Google maps (using the terrain view) I found a nice plateau with clear take-off to most directions, a little South-East of the village of Tunes.
The station was set-up quickly and my first CQ on 10m started at 11:51utc. Conditions were great with loud EU signals (northern part that is). After 30 QSOs in 25 minutes I went to 20m which is always good for the die-hard chasers. So the log quickly filled to 56 in the next 15 minutes. The first part of an activation always gives the highest rate, in particular now that Corona has more or less gone (it has actually not…) and quite a few DXpeditions appear, so you are dependent on the WWFF chasers as there are less casual collectors … Anyway, 12m and 17m were given a work-out as well, before the rate really got low. 15m was not so good mainly because my laptop’s USB interface appears to be generating noise on that band and is susceptible to RFI (I can output max. 50W, above which the USB port crashes and looses control over the IC-7300 via the microHAM CW keyer). No clue yet on how to fix this. It might be inherent to my cheap Lenovo laptop … 10m yielded some USA stations including KG8P (also on 12m and 20m), N5G – who was really loud – and K8P. The latter two were good for a Park-to-park QSO.
I briefly tried 30m, which yielded only a few QSOs as everybody was on the higher bands I guess. So with 142 QSOs in total, I was satisfied when I pulled the plug at 14:45z. 10m appeared to be the money band today, and that’s a first for me !
Here are the stats:
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