Poor band conditions all round!

Thursday – Another day of poor conditions K5D bearly readable on any band as I write todays blog. My mate Russell G5XW is currently backpacking in Morocco, I caught up with him on 14.245 MHz this afternoon, 100 miles west of Marrakech in the Atlas Mountains at 11,000 feet ASL. He is using an Alinco DX70 transceiver 100 watts into a 20m dipole supported by a fishing pole. He reports of poor conditions and dreams of some Pacific calling in. Russell will be active for a couple more days before heading back to England.
QSL for CN2XW is Russell G5XW.
Updated 22/02/09: Russell finally made 563 Qs inro 6 continents.

Also reporting poor conditions is John 9M6XRO in Kota Kinabalu, East Malaysia. Although John did make a CW QSO with K5D this week on 40m. a very difficult path from 9M6. After his low band activity last week he arrived home to find that the PSU for the Quadra Amp had developed a fault, heres what he reports today:

“Pleased to say I got my power supply back today and it is working 100% again. The technician told me he was not able to check the 48v DC output without having the Quadra there so I took the amp over to him this afternoon. It then turned out that it gave a “protection fault” warning when there was no transceiver connected to it so he was still unable to verify if the 48v DC output was OK as the protective circuit disabled the 48v DC line. Rather than have me go back home and bring the 1000MP he said he would trust me and suggested I take the Quadra and PSU and test it in my shack. Once I got it hooked up the whole lot worked perfectly so I gave him a ring and all I have to do now is go over there and settle the bill. He told me it would be around 80 Ringgit which is less than 16 quid!
That’s a relief then John!”

I have to say congratulations to Oliver Bross MW0JRX, he has just received his new callsign from his home country Slovak Republic. Oliver I look forward to putting OM0ARX in my log the next time you visit your family!

Working K5D has been a challenge this week, still only 3 band slots here 17m, 20m and 40m SSB I will try again tomorrow for 15m but unfortunately conditions to Desecheo Island have not been running kindly!
Pictured right is Jerry WB9Z running a huge SSB pileup.
You can see more images from Desecheo Island 2009 on their website: http://www.kp5.us/