Working VK6 Homebrew During the Big Solar Flare

3:14 AM , , 0 Comments


There I was. 0900 UTC (0 Dark Thirty local),  the morning after the big March 17 St. Patrick's Day Coronal Mass Ejection Impact.  Solar Flux Index: 116.  A Index: 117!  I'd never seen the A Index that high.  When I got home from work on  March 17,  I had turned on the BITX 20 and heard nothing but white noise.  No signals.  Nada.  Zilch. So the following morning my expectations for 20 were quite low.  I tuned across the whole band, again hearing nothing.  But wait... there was one signal.  And he was calling CQ.  With an Australian accent.  VK6MV!  The only signal on the band.  I called him with my recently fixed BITX20 (with .12 kW amp) and a dipole.  No problem. We had a nice contact.
A look at Roy's QRZ page shows that he is a fellow homebrewer.  Clearly, the radio gods were making a statement here.   






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Some say he’s half man half fish, others say he’s more of a seventy/thirty split. Either way he’s a fishy bastard. Google

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