6m activity - well, a little anyway

I have removed the Activitypub plugin that was supposed to make it possible to follow this blog from the Fediverse. I was the only follower and it never seemed to work anyway. Less baggage.

Yeah ok, naff title. A new toy arrived today, I've been thinking about getting one of these for a while now and not doing anything about it. The lack of accessible (i.e. ones not too far away) radio rallies puts a damper on acquiring stuff so this was an eBay find. The meter had no slugs but I had ordered a couple from Vintage Electronics as well and all arrived at the same time. Of course I had to test it having never used one before, but as my radio's and patch leads are all currently PL259 I had to use an adapter. Actually three adapters! I ended up going from the rig via an SO239 to BNC male, BNC female to SMA male, and SMA female to N male! But hey, it works. And yes, I really do intend to convert to all N type connectors here… I even have them ready to make up. Lazy...

Well last night 20m was alive with JT65 and JT9. I saw lots of stations from North America and a number from South America. I replied to a dozen or so US but no-one heard me. Oh well. I tried a couple of EU stations, again nothing. Hmmm. Then the band died off... try again tonight! Mind you, if this stuff was too easy it would not be fun. One thing that would be useful is a clock that bleeps every minute but on the, say 45th second to remind you to look for CQs.