Conditions have been very good this past week.
Saturday evening, the 162-MHz NOAA weather radio band lit up and I was copying at least one station on each of the weather radio channels, which is not normal. Nothing new to enter in the log, but I was very surprised to find that band opened at this time of year and that time of day (2330 UTC).
Later in the evening, I noticed Cuba’s Radio Rebelde besting WHAM on 1180 MHz. Again, not a new log entry, but I did copy two other stations that were new to the log:
WQLR “The Fan” on 1660 kHz transmitting 10 kW from Kalamazoo, Michigan, 650 miles to the west-northwest
Navigational beacon ZNS on 385 kHz transmitting 25 watts from Halifax, Nova Scotia, 531 miles to the northeast.
The ICOM IC-R8600 receiver, ICOM AH-7000 discone antenna (for WQLR) and 80-meter dipole antenna (for ZNS) were my ears of choice.
