10 Metres Opens Up For Early Sporadic-E Openings

It would be worth keeping an eye open on the 28MHz band over the next few days. The band was open for some very strong sporadic-E contacts across Eastern Europe as far as OK & SP and down into southern Italy as well as DL and OZ plus south westwards to EA yesterday (13 May) and also today (Friday 14th) from noon until late afternoon.

One notable SSB QSO was with Raphael IM/P- IK0FMB (what a callsign!!) on the little island of Antioco, 20K West of Sardia with an S9+ signal with 400W to a 2-ele home made beam who gave me a 5&7 report with 400W from my windoim antenna.

There were quite a few low power beacons to be heard including IZ8DXB/B in JN70L as far south as Naples and EA4Q in Spain. Stations on 28 MHz were reporting that 6M was also open although when I listened a bit later I heard nothing on my windom.

Lets hope that this early opening is a foretaste of good DX conditions this summer on the HF Bands as the sunspot cycle progresses.

73, de Derek G3GRO

Dayton 2010 day 1

This is the first of a series of mini posts describing the trip to the 2010 Dayton Hamvention. G3VLH, G4ANN, G3LHZ, M0ZAF and myself (G3YSX) traveled out to DAY via Charlotte yesterday. Looking at the various blogs, we did better than many other European hams who tried to go out yesterday, but none the less it was a long haul. We got here, but it seems that those that tried to travel out via Spain found that flight after flight was canceled.

In our case the flight was delayed from 0940 to 1140 due the late arrival of the inbound aircraft, which was in turn caused by an extended flight to dodge the ash. Our flight time increased from 9 hours to 11 hours due to the need to fly north of the volcano to avoid the ash.



From the aircraft we could see the volcano off the port side of the aircraft.

We finally landed at 16.56, 3 hours 20mins later than planned. We were then moved on to the (late) 19.49 flight to DAY in a process that was very smooth by US Airways. We then arrived at Dayton field just as a thunderstorm settled in. A bit of bumpy air and a short hold gave the pilot an opportunity for a slightly expedited landing just as the storm moved to the south of the field.

Getting the hire car was smooth, but navigating the extensive roadworks put our GPS sat nav into a routing loop. We told it to use minor roads only, which did the trick, and finally got to the hotel at 23.30. For me this was a total journey time of 21.5 hours.

Stewart/G3YSX

MTI ATU2000 / STR400

Richard, G4ANN, is looking for information on an Automatic ATU that he is hoping to repair and use on HF. The label says that it is made by (or at least Marketed by) Marine Technology International Ltd. It has markings STR400 and ATU2000 on the cover.

Outside and internal pictures are shown below.

If anyone has any information on this ATU, particularly a circuit diagram and/or a manual of some sort, please can you email (stewart at g3ysx.org.uk), or add a comment on the blog.

Thanks in advance for any help

Stewart/G3YSX