Without a doubt, my two favourite bands, with that in mind these are the two bands im concentrating on over the summer (if you can call it a summer) I put my 6 Element Innovantenna Op-Des (pictured above) back up at the workshop a couple of weeks ago so i could monitor 50Mhz between jobs, ive managed a couple of new ones albeit on FT8 but at this stage of the sunspot cycle I will take what I can get, would much prefer to work DX on conventional modes like CW and SSB (CW Preferred) but you have to go where the DX is.
A very welcome ATNO in the shape of Jeff TZ4AM in Mali and on CW as well a few weeks ago took my DXCC count to 98 and HZ1SK on FT8 this week took me to 99, very close to the magic 100, although i still need at least 20 confirmed at this point, it sometimes seems easier to work the DX than actually get it confirmed.
This years Es season has been very hit and miss, unfortunatley the one decent opening into the Caribbean last week was missed as I was not QRV that evening, there has been some nice stuff on 10m and the band has opened up into North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean on a fairly regular basis, there has also been some nice short E’s openings into EI, GI and GM, I have resisted the temptation to use FT8 on 10m or any HF band for that matter preferring just to restrict my FT8 usage to 6m
I have been thinking of taking the Cushcraft MA5B down at home and replacing it with a 3 element 10m LFA, although the MA5B is a 2 element on 10 its still a trap antenna and thus a compromise, im still undecided whether the performance difference between the LFA and MA5B will be significant enough to warrant the hassle of changing them over, still to be decided.