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Tony's 10 Metre Band Report
17 January 2007

First things first, Ten-Ten International News gave me and the Southgate Club a brief mention in its January 2007 News. A very worthy organisation it is too if you are, as we all are, interested in 10 metres.

I hope its members will now respond in droves to tell me who they’ve heard or worked on 10m. Ten-Ten publishes every quarter so it can get a little behind with things, whereas this column comes out every week.

Most popular DX, in order of popularity or stations worked. The tail end of each day's list may have been just reported once. Saturdays and Sundays and contests are usually different, with sometimes a minimum of 10 needed to get into the day’s list. The reason for this is that I have limited space (bandwidth) to play with and long, long lists become boring.

Having said that Sunday’s list is dominated by Ds (Germany). Well it was the DARC 10m contest day!!. Good old XT2C, the Burkina-Faso DXpedition, easily tops every day except Friday. What happened then I wonder, dust in the PA? They are due to be active until 25th January.

Monday: XT2C, T30XX, ZL2TEM, ZL1JMC, W8GP, VK7JCR, KQ6PK, KE4I, KC8ZLV, K5PEW, IZ7AUH, HA5BSW, EA4WD, EA3JL.

Tuesday: XT2C, 6W/PA3GIO, N5XZ, JG3MGL, CT1FMX, EA1DBC, EA7CPL, F1AKK, F4EVR, F8AFC, G0KOM, HA5BSW, I0GOD, IW7EGQ, IZ4IRJ, K5PEW, NZ3O, PE1HWO, SV9AHZ, VE3DRT, VK6CJL, ZL3NB.

Wednesday: XT2C, 6W/PA3GIO, N5XZ, IK2WXQ, IW9GEC, IZ4GWE, VK3SE, W2GW.

Thursday: XT2C, S57S, 3D2RN, CN8SG, YY4RN, KH6CW, PU2TES, VK1XP, VK2APG, VK2SD, VK3FM, VK6DU, VP8LP.

Friday: BX5AA, BX4AA, LU3HS, RK6FW, S57S, SV8/DL8MCA, XT2C, N5XZ, RK6HWW, YY4MP.

Saturday: XT2C, LY2AE, ZS6BQI, YU1ACR, 9W6SUE, DL3LAB, DL6BLD, EB1ISN, IZ5ENZ, OH1JO, YL3BZ, 9K2HN, CN8LI, DJ1AA, DK2CB, DL1NUX, DL4FCS, DO5OT, EA5GRD, EA7HB, EC7ABV, G7RAU, GM4FDM, IW1QN, IZ8FQO, OE7PKJ, ON6NL, OP0P, VK4CQ, YO9BXC.

Sunday: XT2C, DJ6QT, DJ1AA, DJ3BO, DL2YOU, DO1FT, 9W6SUE, DB8WK, DC2VE, DJ9KH, DL2ARD, DL5RBR, DC7NF, DD5FZ, DD9FZ, DF0HO, DF1BV, DF9IC, DG1NSE, DH6BH, DJ6ET, DJ8WK, DJ9HX, DK0OF, DK2A, DK2DB, DL1NUX, DL2MWB, DL3VL, DL5YM, DL7OD, DL8LAS, DL9GS, DL9NWE, DO4ZN, DO5OT, DO9ZZZ, DP6M, DQ1000FU, DR6X, SM2Z, VK5FDMR, VK7BBB, 9V1PC, DD3DJ, DE9PRQ, DF2FU, DF2UU, DJ8OG, DL1EFD, DL1EL, DL6RAI, DL7IO, DL9FBG, DL9KK, DO1MPH.

F4FDA, David, heard XT2C, “ast & hight qsb on 28.444 also active 29.600 FM , but no rx here”. I’m not sure what “ast” is.

Several stations working 6W/PA3GIO (Senegal) used the older format PA3GIO/6W. May be the newer version is not globally accepted, let me know what is used where you are. In any event it’s usual to log the call as the operator says it. There are 10 different operators of the 6W/ station so that may account for the variety. They will operate until January 20th.

VU7 (Lakshadweep) will once again be active from 15th to 25th January. They were very active in December.

VP2M (Montserrat) will be active from 29th January to 6th February.

V31JP (Belize) will be on right up to April and OX3PG (Greenland) should go right through to June.

YV0 (Aves Island) will see a whole gaggle of amateurs operating in the 2nd week of February. (Not a bad collective noun for a lot of radio hams).

Ten-Ten reports that the best days for conditions should be 3rd to 5th Feb, 2nd to 5th March and 1st to 4th April. I say, if you restrict yourself to those days you maybe will miss an awful lot (maybe!).

Contests: Just the two this coming weekend. The UT (Ukraine Teenager) Contest , 06:00 to 14:00 on Saturday 20th and Hungarian DX Contest from 12:00 Saturday 20th to 12:00 Sunday 21st.

The Aussies have done it again. This from David Summerhays, Sellicks Beach, near Adelaide, South Australia Jan. 16, 2007

Sun: One miniscule (?) sunspot, 938. It’s not going to cause any flare problems. Ten-Ten reports that signs of reverse polarity sun spots have been seen. This could be the next solar cycle starting. But I’ll report back on this if it firms up.

Comet McNaught has gone from visibility in the Northern Hemisphere and I never got to see it. Conditions here in London over the past month to 6 weeks have been poor for astronomy and with the comet being low down toward the horizon virtually impossible from my QTH.

One final item. Choong Yew Fai, 9W2FAI (Malaysia) (nice call) asks, “What is the 10m band frequency & mode so that I can monitor .” He had been listening on 28,400MHz, which does have some activity.

Advice always varies on a so-called “calling channel” but I’ll stick my neck out and say around 28,500MHz from 28,470 to 28,520 for SSB and around 29,600 for FM. On contest weekends, anywhere in the band.