Breakthrough

It is as if the Radio Gods had been waiting for academic summer to end. Suddenly over the weekend, after the college kids returned to their campuses and the high schooler got back into their school routine, the bands improved significantly at my QTH.

Saturday evening I had a couple hours to myself and fired up the IC-7300, hoping to make some Hawaii QSO Party contacts. I only heard one station, amazingly calling CQ on the frequency my radio was sitting at when it powered on. But I couldn’t get my act together to call back before he gave up and disappeared.

I moved to the 40 meter band, which seemed to be both clear of local noise and hopping. In the next hour I made 10 contacts, mostly Ohio QSO Party stations with a couple POTA activations thrown in. My most phone contacts in a single day since late April!

In the four days since I’ve been shaking the phone cobwebs off, with at least two contacts per day. This morning I went on a nice run and already have seven in the logbook as I type this just before lunch time. That puts me at 25 voice contacts this week, after I had just one in all of August before that.

Fifteen meters was showing some promise before a contractor arrived for a service visit. Hints of European activity scattered throughout the band, a couple even loud enough for me to tentatively copy their full calls. Knocking on wood they will be louder after my appointment is completed. Dare I hope to begin hearing activity on 10, which has been completely dead to me for months, again soon? The dreaded local noise is still around, decimating 40 this morning, but for at least pockets of each day it is either not present or subdued enough for me to spin the dial seeking signals.

The equinox is getting closer. Even with the falling solar activity I am hopeful that the fall DX season brings the opportunity to run up my QSO numbers to where they were last winter, when I was uploading 100 or more SSB contacts to LOTW each week.