In the sense of "active on the radio" instead of like playing with radium or uranium or other elements that emit alpha, beta or gamma radiation.
This weekend is American Radio Relay League's annual September VHF contest. As you can read on that page, this is the third and final VHF contest of the year that the ARRL provides. The other two are in January and June; like this one those two tend to be close to the middle of the month. Without a doubt, the June contest tends to be the most active and busiest of the three. I've written about these before, partly in effort to get more people interested in the contests and partly just to talk about things that are interesting, fun or important to me.
For those who have seen maps signal reports spotted when it's busy, this map from around 2350 to 0000 UTC (on Sunday the 14th) will seem weird. This is DXMaps, with the settings I use. This only includes the most recent 15 minutes worth of "spots" (signal reports from one or both of the calls on one line).
For comparison to how it looks when it's busy, you can look at this old post. Almost every state east of that noticeable North-South line (marked DN and DM in the big rectangles to the west) is hidden under a blob of red lines between contacts.
My own station has heard another station outside of peninsular Florida only four times since 2PM EDT when the contest started. That is, it heard only four different calls outside of the peninsula. It's pretty dead. I haven't worked a single station - I've worked these folks several to many times.
But hope springs eternal. I'll be spending most of the weekend in the station.
Good Hunting!
ReplyDelete