Keeping an ear open...

The recent sunny weather here in the UK has mixed blessings. Its great to get outside and see some sunshine, but all the gardening and outdoor chores mean less time for radio! still I have been managing to keep an ear on the bands, have a few QSOs and still do a bit of CW practice. I haven't found the higher HF bands to be very lively of late. As a result its been back to 30metres for much of my operating. Still lets hope the Sporadic E season brings us some activity. I hope we will see some 10 metre and six metre activity soon. When 6 metres is open it can be an amazing band. Even with my simple loft dipole on 6 metres last tear some of the signals on the band were very strong. Looking back at my logbook I see that most of the sporadic E contacts I had were in June and July so perhaps we have a while to wait. The most surprising contact of 2009 was for me on 70mhz (4 metres)  FM  where I worked S51DI (Slovenia) using an indoor wire dipole!, it was a true chance contact, he was calling on 70450 we managed to exchange reports and then he was gone.