15 meters is a strange band. Yesterday I was tuning around, around lunchtime, and heard absolutely no stations from one end of the band to the other. But a few minutes later, I began hearing weak signals near the bottom of the band, so I stopped tuning to listen. As the signals got stronger, I was able to copy the callsigns, and realized I was listening to 9J2BO, Brian, in Lusaka, Nambia.
The strongest signal on the band was coming from 8000 miles away.
Tuning up from there resulted in no stations heard. None. Not one.
Today as I was driving home, I heard W1AW on 21.060, as is usual in the afternoon, and CO2GL in Havana, and JH9FNB/MM somewhere in the Pacific. And I heard some of the stations talking to them. But nothing else anywhere on the band.
During periods of low sunspot activity, 15 can be a dead band, but also can have paradoxical openings to the other side of the world with little or no notice.
Posted in Radio Daze by WA5ICA at January 30, 2004 06:57 PM