ANOTHER X-FLARE!

Earth-orbiting satellites detected an X1-class solar flare from sunspot AR1875 on Oct. 28th at 0203 UT. This is the 3rd X-flare since Oct. 25th, which means solar activity is still high.

X-ray Event exceeded X1

Begin 0141 UTC

Max 0203 UTC

End 0212 UTC

X-ray Class: X1.0

Optical Class: 2n

Location: N04W66

NOAA Scale: R3 -Strong

Not great news for HF but might be good for VHF / UHF bands! Time will tell....

I'll be looking for you on the Bands! :)

CQ WW SSB Contest

This weekend is the SSB part of the CQ Worldwide Contest, it is a great contest with many stations all over the planet participating. I find this contest a great way to increase your Country DXCC on certain bands if your into chasing any awards etc. I hope to be on air over the weekend to give away a few points for CQ Zone 14 but I won't be active for the entire contest. All the information you need for this contest is here on the CQ WW DX website.

http://www.cqww.com/index.htm

Here is also a list of stations to look out for that will be active over this weekend; http://www.ng3k.com/misc/adxo.html

So time to get the shack together and some antennas up and tested looking at the SFI / SSN numbers today they are looking reasonably okay nothing amazing but better than previous weeks let's hope it gets better by the weekend. I will look forward to working you on the air, enjoy the contest.

Good luck to all,

73's

Pat 

- Posted from my iPhone - 73's DE EI5IX

UKAC 432Mhz 8th October Contest

Entered the UKAC 432Mhz Contest last night (Tuesday 8th of October) under my UK Callsign M0XII/P.

I was portable from locator IO91MP with Jason M1PRO and John G0KLX. We ended the contest with a total of 89 QSO's and 14 Square Multipliers and a total score of 189,574. The furthest contact was GM4CXM - 527Km on Flat conditions, QSB on the 70Cm band was deep at times but we really enjoyed the activity on 432Mhz.

Setup was an FT847 & 100 Watt Linear Amplifier.

The Antenna was a Tonna 21 Element Yagi and of course the good old Arm Strong Rotator.

I must say these Tonna Yagi's have a very narrow beam width but work quiet well.

Map of Qso's made during the contest from 19:00UTC - 21:30UTC

Thanks to all the stations that called through it was much appreciated and made time fly by especially when your out portable on top of a cold hill. I look forward to the next UKAC Contest hope to hear you on the bands.

Best 73's 

Pat