Lloyd:

I agree totally with your observations about 10 meters.

It was a pleasure to work so many stations on 10 this week-end, even with a 
simple wire antenna, without having to deal with so much band congestion and 
resulting QRM.

In fact, I can't remember 10 meters being as open as it was this week-end 
for quite a while.

It will be nice if the band stays this open for the ARRL 10-meter contest 
which, I think, occurs on the second full week-end in December.

Tom Behler: KB8TYJ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lloyd Rasmussen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 7:13 AM
Subject: Re: 10 and 15 meters continued


>    If the 40 dipole is expected to work on 15 and it is full-sized, the
> third harmonic resonance frequency will be somewhat higher than 15 meters,
> perhaps 22 MHz or more.  This is because the 468/F formula for a half-wave
> dipole includes a correction for what some call the "end effect".  Also, 
> the
> 15-meter mode will have several lobes instead of the simple figure-8 
> pattern
> of a dipole, so some directions may fall into nulls.
>
> During the CQWW contest, which I operated for about 13 hours, working 40
> through 10, I worked 320 stations in 82 countries on 10, but only 55
> countries on 15.  It was a matter of allocation of time during the various
> openings.  Ten meter phone is so much fun because a contest can spread out
> over more than 700 KHz (28.3 to above 29.0), while 20 is only 200 KHz wide
> and 15 only 250.  This gives a lot more stations the option of calling CQ
> and you have less frequencies that are 2 or 3 layers deep in QSOs.  Also,
> you don't hear as many of the stations in your own country on whatever 
> band
> is the highest in frequency at a given time.  This QRM factor is not such 
> a
> big deal in CW contests.
>
>
>
> Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, MD
> http://lras.home.sprynet.com