Have you tried 10 Meters lately? I have and I assure you DX has been rolling in like gang-busters!
On 100 watts, I made contacts with Alaska, Christmas Island and even Japan!
My antenna is nothing more than a vertical IMAX-2000.
These contacts were fairy easy to get, despite running into pileups.
Since I became a ham in 2008, I’ve heard stories of 10 meters being a band you can talk around the world on with 10 watts, but I found that hard to believe given that I’ve never tuned in that band and heard much of anything.
All across the frequency spectrum on 10 meters, signals could be heard. Australia, Japan, Belgium, France and Alaska, Africa and South America are a few I’ve heard.
When I come across a frequency, I’ll wait till I hear the call sign, write it down along with name and QTH. After I’ve accumulated this info, I’ll answer his/her cqdx. This way he can get the contact with me and go on to another quickly.
Occasionally I’ll ask a question or two about where the person lives.
I have to be quick though because sometimes I’ll wait to get all the info then standby for his next CQ call only to have him go QRT. So, I’ve been jumping on the DX stations a little quicker. If I don’t get the call sign just right, I’ll read back what I have and wait for the correction. This seems to work pretty well.
Some stations are really loud, and by the time I get out every syllable of my call sign (phonetically), someone else already got the call… and I hear that station when I unkey.
Another thing I do is use different phonetics to speed up how fast I can get my call sign transmitted.
It takes longer to say, “KILO ECHO 5 UNIFORM TANGO NOVEMBER than it does to say, ‘KING EDWARD 5 UNITED TEXAS NORWAY”. So, I’ll go with the second version of my call or just toss in my suffix.
If you haven’t tried 10 meters, you better get while the getting is good! There’s no telling when the sunspots will die back down leaving 10 Meters sputtering like it was a few weeks ago.
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