I caught the tail end of the 144MHz UKAC last night. Listening around on SSB it was useful to see how effective my basic loft dipole is. This is a cut-down old FM radio antenna I’ve had for decades. It’s fixed horizontal roughly east-west so should max north and south.
The closest heard was around 7 miles off the west end of the dipole and a clear path, and the furthest was 35 miles roughly ENE with a lot of buildings and a hill in the way. No idea the strengths of those because the S-meter packed in while I was listening, but all were easy R5 and plenty of juice. I’ve also no idea what power they were using and this is all very unscientific but at least proves the stuff works. Hopefully I’ll be free to join in next month.
Now if I could just manage a rotatable 6/4/2/70 setup on one of the chimneys… one day.