HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Propagation => Topic started by: Robot Matrix on February 03, 2025, 0631 UTC
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Was listening to K5KAB on 14282 kHz around 5-6UTC 2/2/25, when he suddenly disappeared. Everything basically disappeared on almost all bands. 40M seemed to be the only band where voice communication was even possible. Went to spaceweather.com and other sites to find out that solar activity was causing all this. I didn't hear pretty much anyone unless they were running some major power. The exception was digital modes, including CW. Nice lesson on the importance of CW and VERY narrow band modes. Any one else notice this?
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Still ongoing of and on. All HF bands have been pretty dead here all day with exceptions. This morning I could hear 80 and 40m with hams talking about having their coffee (as was I), but not great. 10m was dead all day and still. I could hear 11m at dusk, but as usual it's all west coast stations, due to back scatter. I did manage to catch a 20m station, also due to back scatter. Last night I could hear 160m coming in decent after dusk as well as a ham (N8OO) on 20m working the states and Central and South America. Haven't heard a pirate in a bit. If I don't see the 40m FT8 signals, not likely I'll pick up a pirate. Murphy's law since I just built the new mobius loop antenna and am eager to test it's limits. I guess I AM testing it's limits, right? It's OK. I just have to be patient for things to go back to normal.
EDIT:
So, after being all suspicious about the lack of normal signals, I found out that either one of my cats bumped the antenna connection on the WEB-888 SDR, or the SDR has a bad solder connection I need to rectify inside, or i need to fix my PL-259 on my coax. For now, I have all my signals again. Ugh... I hate to have to troubleshoot, but at least I can.