Check with the local Amateur Radio Club if you have one. They may run a 10 meter NET.
Except for local stations the band is usually dead between sunset and sunrise.
We are at a truck stop just outside of Cheyenne, taking a much needed "power nap". We should make the finish line in 3 hours.
The truckers still use Ch 19 for initial contacts and "smokey" reporting. I found out that many of them, particularly those in convoys will often use Ch 25 or Ch 35 for inter-convoy communications.
Very little base station activity. None of the typical "chit chat" that used to be abundant on the CB channels anymore. These days its done via twitfacetube and text messaging. Only the dedicated die hard groups will be found working skip and rarely talking to someone across their own town.
And because of the new forms of instant communication affecting things like CB, it is a reasonable conclusion that HAM is also affected...considering the costs involved and no license needed or room full of expensive radio gear taking up space or relying on a network of repeater systems.
The dedicated ones...yes there is still activity from them in both CB and HAM, but as noted earlier, the numbers are decreasing. When the dedicated ones pass on, those activities in these bands will further decrease as new technologies and new methods of communication are constantly being developed and introduced.
The neat thing though is I also discovered there were a surprising number of the truckers in convoys or going it alone, also have on board a 10 meter rig or even a mobile HF rig and a HAM license. Their "shack on wheels" so to speak, some which use those radios to maintain contact with home base where their better half or other family member is also a HAM.
It's all not going to completely die out, but we will see the numbers decrease steadily simply because of the cheaper and more readily available forms of communication with a device that simply slips into your shirt pocket.
Now if the HAM's can develop a radio like that of the size of a cell phone, and develop a network like that of a cell phone, it might just re-peak the interest in the newer generations and sign up to become licensed HAM's. But as long as these other forms of communication are out there which do not require any license or knowledge of radio theory or electronics...CB and HAM have a very long up hill battle ahead.
We are about to depart for the final leg of the trip.
RFB
Several years ago when I was very active on 2 meters, there was a repeater network that covered Ohio, PA, Mich, Ill, In, Ky, Tn and perhaps a little more.
We left Cuyahoga Falls for vacation in Kentucky and I was able to maintain communication back to home base using a hand held portable. The portable has a High (2 watt) and Low (100 mw) power setting so we're not talking much power here.
The antenna was a "rubber duck".
And yes, the Hams do have portables the size of a pack of Lucky Strikes.
Remembering from news reports how cell phones and power going out during emergencies suddenly makes HAM radio the difference between staying in contact or being lost in the stone age.
We should have generators and HAM, or at least CB, for those "just in case" situations.
At 8:50 PM local EST I fired up the
ICOM R-70 in the listening shack, and
put the 100 foot long wire onto it.
I went from 26 to 30 MHz. There were
a lot of guys talking in Spanish on
26.715 MHz, which is several hundred
KCs below CB channel one, I think. So
they were clearly illegal, or "freebanders,'
I guess you could say.
CB channel 14, 27.125 MHz was active with
a couple of guys talking about antennas,
towers, and such. The guy I was hearing best
was in Massachusetts, and he had a rotatable
CB beam antenna. His signal was good, about
S9. He turned his antenna a little, and his
signal strength went down a bit. So this guy
is one of those dedicated "Still On CB," persons.
He had a tower of some kind, and a 3 or 4 element
CB beam. He knew a lot technically. I think he
might have also been a ham. I am in Hartford, so
my guess is he was about 20 miles away.
Then I heard some bits and pieces of trucker conversation
on 27.185, which I believe is CB channel 19. Not too
much there. But it might be fun to park the R-70 there,
and see what comes by. I am near the highway.
To Carl - you may want to run some kind of wire out to
a tree to hear some of this stuff. I wouldn't take much.
You could run the wire under a window sill and shut the
screen and the window. I don't know the best way to hook
it up to a portable like the Sangean. There may be more
signal than the radio can handle. If your Transoceanic is
a tube radio, it would not care, I imagine.
I have had antennas that were so simple, that I would just
unhook them at the house, roll them up, and place the roll
of wire next to the tree they were attached to. (This is
for times of thunderstorms, that sort of thing.)
However, there ARE MANY BETTER WAYS to do this. Because of
terrain, I have never had a lightning strike near here
in 21 years of living in this house. You other guys
know a lot more about that. And hooking the antenna
up to a radio may require something extra that somebody
can suggest.
But I do think if you want to hear some of this stuff -
put something outside. There are active HF receiving
antennas that are low key (usually a small whip antenna)
and they cover the whole HF spectrum. That might be a
solution. It all depends on what you really feel like
doing, I guess. That's really the bottom line.
By the way - I heard nothing on the ten meter ham band -
28.0 to 29.7. But as one of the members here said:
you really only hear signals on ten during daylight
hours.
I haven't tuned in the CB range for YEARS. It's funny -
my original 1966 Space Patrol CB walkie talkie was on channel
14 - the same channel I was listening to tonight.
For what it's worth.
Best Wishes,
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
The Zenith Transoceanic only goes up to 22.4mHz, and for some reason skips over the 13.560mHz spot, so there's little use for the interests I have.
The Sangean DOES have an antenna input, so the outdoor antenna is doable.
We made it! Good thing too..another snow front moving through Wy. from the NW.
"And yes, the Hams do have portables the size of a pack of Lucky Strikes."
True..but you still need a HAM license. The average joe and jane wont' bother with the routines...or are even aware of them..to get that license to use that Lucky Strike sized HAM version of their cell phones when all they simply have to do is purchase one, activate it and start dialing or text messaging.
But people like us who are into the details and routines of licensing etc will be the ones to carry it on to the next generations..if we can overcome the flood of the alternatives readily available to them.
Gonna be a hard sales pitch. I have already encountered that when introducing youngsters at the ages of 10 to HAM radio...then they say "just a minute" while answering their text message.
Anyway we are back and made it before the storm..though I think the storm will be a minor flake here and there and nothing as serious as whats going on further up north.
RFB
The snow will be a drop in the bucket compared to what you and your wife have just been through.
So neat to have you stay in touch the whole way.
As promised we kept the light on for you.
RFB - glad you're back. Hope you and
your wife can get some rest. You sure
deserve it after that trip. I guess I'll
take the battery operated candle out of
the window now.
I took a listen from 26 to 30 MHz just
now, about 9:40 AM local EST.
A lot of Spanish on 26.715 again. Above
that into the CB channels, some regular
local AM conversations (I'm surprised there
is more than I thought there would be.)
On roughly 27.025 (channel 4?, not sure)
lots of AM signals on top of each other.
Lots of mention of Jamaica, and the dialect
from one of the operators sounded like that's
where he was. But the operating tactics of
the stations were so disorganized, I never
could get a real confirmation where anyone was.
Between 27.5 and 28 MHz, I heard SSB signals.
The operators of those stations acted like hams,
even though they were not. I clearly heard
Venice, Italy and Cambridge in the U.K. These
guys were more organized in their operating than
some dudes below 27 MHz. There was no doubt in
my mind as to their locations. The signals were
about S9. My 100 foot wire probably is not the
best for this, but it does work.
Getting up into the 10 meter ham band at 28 MHz,
I was surprised to hear Morse code conversations
in the lower part of the band! Quite a few, in
fact!
Then I got up above 28.300, and heard an unknown
U.S. station talking to Sweden. No doubt there.
This was SSB. The U.S. station commented that
10 meters had been great in the fall, but then
after November it was hardly ever open for DX.
He was glad to hear it active this morning.
He said the propagation figures from WWV prompted
him to go up and call CQ on 10 meters. There's an
old saying about 10 meters in the ham radio world.
It's basically this; Ten meters might be open all over
the world. But if everybody is listening and nobody
tries to call another station - nobody will ever know
that the band is actually open.
I love ten meters. I have a couple of ham radio rigs
that transmit there, but I have been having trouble
with the antenna I put up for 10. Something is wrong.
I guess I'll have to get back on working on it.
This solar cycle is not as good as some cycles where
the F2 layer maximum usable frequency has gotten up past 50
MHz. I remember in the fall of 1982 hearing a code
station from California slamming into my station at
60 dB over S9 on 50 MHz (6 meters.) For weeks and
weeks, I heard some kind of sporting event on 46 MHz
in the afternoons, for hours on end. Even today,
I have no idea where it was from.
And if the MUF ever gets up to 60 or 70 MHz,
that's when the TV DXers get involved. I don't
think we'll get that in this cycle, though.
However, low band TV channels and some FM radio
stations have gotten across the Atlantic in
the summers of some recent years, via multihop
sporadic E skip. There are some amazing recordings
on YouTube. All you have to do is type in something
like FM DX reception, or TV DX, or something like that.
There is a guy in Portugal who has gotten TV DX on
channel 2 from the U.S. and parts of South America.
And some guy in Ireland with a gigantic FM receiving
array heard some upper east coast U.S. FM stations a couple
of years ago. (E skip.) And I THINK a few years ago, a channel
2 in Florida was received in Hawaii via F skip, but
I don't remember the details.
Exciting stuff.
Bruce, DOGRADIO STYDIO 2
At 11:00 AM EST ham radio station
EB1BSV was heard by me. He was
in the 10 meter FM allocation on
29.600 MHz. Spain, I think.
Very clear. Then he faded away. He
was calling CQm but nobody answered him,
that I could hear. I wish I could have
called him from here in Hartford, Connecticut.
I guess if there is any more discussion on
this we'll have to move it to another thread.
This thread has been mainly about longwave
up to this point.
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
25.950 MHz. Narrowband FM signal. Sounds like an
AM broadcast station remote feeder.
It just gave the time as 7:25 AM,
four hours behind me.
The frequency list on the internet says
it's probably the feed from KIRO (710kHz)
in Seattle, WA. And that makes sense.
If I get a positive ID, I'll mention it here.
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
It was KOA Denver, CO. I must have
been wrong about the time announcement
that I heard. (KOA is 50,000W on 850 kHz.)
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
XE1RCS beacon in Mexico City, Mexico, heard
here weakly, but no problem copying the Morse Code.
Freq. is 28.182 MHz. I looked it up and the transmit
power is 8 watts. It is weak but stable. The antenna
is on a 50 foot tower. I'm assuming that the antenna
is a vertical.
OK. I guess I've covered this whole thing enough.
If I find anything interesting after this, I will
start a different thread. I haven't listened any
higher than 30 MHz, but 30 to 50 MHz used to be
very busy. I wonder how it is now? I will
definitely create a new thread if I have more stuff
on this.
Thanks if you lasted this long.
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
After a third scan from 20 mHz to 30 mHz at different times of the day there was nothing to hear, so I switched up to the 2-meter band and have an ongoing conversation about antennas and grounding.
One guy was thinking of ways of having an antenna in his subdivision, where the antenna limit is 4-feet. He talked about a birdhouse pole, but figured his laying down ground radials would catch the watchful eye of gestapo spies. He mentioned the thought of having a crank-up tower after dark, which could be collapsed and hidden in a tool shed during the day.
Frequency 145.325
I've thought of things like that at our house.
Considering the fact that the people next door
don't like my two wires going out to the trees.
But what really made them crazy was my Part 15
AM outside transmitting antenna, which is down now.
The radiator was a 3 meter stick starting at the
ground. But it had a gigantic top hat on there.
(This is coming up on 3 years ago, I guess.)
So I put a plastic 10 foot PVC pole pointed up on top of the 3 meter
stick. Then I ran nonconductive "guy wires" from
the top of the plastic pole (20 feet up) down to
the sides of the top hat.
If you can picture this thing... My wife it looked like a boat
about to set sail, except there was no sail.
The guys next door went crazy about that one. But I didn't
even find out until about a year after I took it down.
You know, if you bring your radio outside some time, you
might hear some of this 25 to 30 MHz stuff, you know - if you feel like
doing that.
Best Wishes,
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2