Bottom of the cycle, bands will be dead they say. Well, perhaps not as dead as one expects. Little openings are there all throughout the day and in my case, VK2 was open most of the day. Bands are dead of course, not because there is no propagation, but because there is no one home to work. It is what it is and this WSPR thing is pretty cool. I did not learn anything i did not already know, USA in the mornings and Asia in the evenings. And a few other bits and bobs along the way.
I did have one interesting thing happen, a broken decode where I got no call sign but did get a grid square, I am not confident this is actually accurate, but if it is, then the station i was copying was in Egypt, someways south of Cairo. It would be cool if this was actually the case, but I won’t be holding my breath LOL.
I have always suspected that my less than 5 watts signal was travelling greater distances even though I couldn’t prove that through a QSO. There have always been little openings were a short burst of transmission travels many miles from its origination, but the opening is not sufficient enough for a QSO under current authorized communications modes. Some day communications will mostly be automated, IF OUR REGULATING BODIES PERMIT US TO OPERATE THAT WAY, which I doubt and hope that I not live to see that day come. Using operator skills and the two openings on either side of my noggin to capture those intelligible bits is my preference. Its nice that computers and software have been developed to authenticate that those signals are travelling around the globe in little spurts, albeit not long enough for a 2 way communication to transpire.
Best 73 de KB8AMZ, aka Terry Morris