12m opens to VK, YB

12m is always a fascinating band.  It's been unusually dead, even for solar minimum, over the past few weeks.

But today, things changed.

VK6XI was coming through fairly weakly, and propagation was very patchy.  But we did manage a QSO during a very brief, stronger moment, though I had to push about 45W through the 3-ele to be heard, giving an ERP, ground reflections included, of several hundred Watts.

 

A bit later, YB0COU came in at varying, but sometimes very strong levels.  That QSO was a little easier to achieve.  As is often the case on 12m, and without anyone spotting him on the cluster, nobody was then coming back to YB0COU.

The last time I made a 12m VK QSO was as recent as March 12, and there were several in November and December 2020.  There is then a gap all the way back to March 18, 2020 for the next VK QSO.

Beaming VK and YB this morning.  Still pretty cool weather, if sunny.

A visit from our semi-resident Red-Legged Partridges

Without FT8, we would all still be stuck in the 1970s ideas, claiming 12m is dead, and won't be usable until near solar maximum.  But it's true that, today at least, you couldn't afford to blink or go to the toilet, because the signal would probably be gone!