Yesterday was a fun day with lots of radio! The bad news is that the bands were in poor shape and the majority of my operating was on digital. I made a few SSB contacts on 20m and 80m later in the day, though. I was pleased that with a random wire plus tuner I was able to comfortably make it on 80m digital and voice; I also spent a lot of time on 30m which helped toward our WARC band goal.

As far as satellites, I got on RS-44 which was an absolute madhouse with really poor operator behavior. Despite that, I did make a handful of contacts or so. Note to those trying to work on my RS-44 – you need to give me a chance to respond! The pileup was endless after I made a contact like noting I have ever experienced before on satellites. It significantly cut down on the total number of contacts I could make as my 5W signal cannot make the big gun QRO stations back home.

Today’s plan is similar to yesterday – we are back on the radio right now, currently FT8 but hoping to move to SSB as soon as we can. I really want to make some 6m contacts; it was totally dead all day yesterday which was frustrating. Only station I heard was from Puerto Rico ~75 miles away, but I couldn’t even make that happen on FT8. I am constantly jumping over to check that band.

I am planning to make another RS-44 pass later today and potentially an FM pass of some sort (see hams.at). We also might head out to the beach this afternoon and then out to dinner for a few hours. If we do, I will likely make the RS-44 pass from the beach, and Andy plans to bring a QRP rig to keep things going there as well.

We have another solid day of operating ahead of us. Here is to hoping the bands open in our favor! As always, follow along on X @kd8rtt and @kk4lwr for the latest info. We are accommodating skeds best we can as well and have been able to work a few friends already.