With a little luck and a bit of perseverance I managed to work two European stations on 10 meters today. I was pleasantly surprised to add both Belgium (OT4A) and Poland (SP9LJD) to my logbook. With the band being open in the morning my simple G5RV antenna and FT-897D running 100 watts is actually working, which at times I wondered if it was when it seemed no one could hear me.
Today I also had an "Ah ha!" moment with a setting on my Yaesu FT-897D. I often wondered why stations sounded so, well, just plain bad on receive. Even when band conditions were not the best I noticed that a lot of stations were hard to copy and their audio sounded like it was coming from a blown speaker. While listening to a station today on 10 meters today the meter was pegged at 60dB over S9. After a quick consultation with the manual I turned on the attenuation. Magically the signal became almost crystal clear. In fact I don't think I have ever heard audio sound so good on receive. I tuned around the band listening to other stations and they all sounded great. So my lesson learned was attenuation is a good thing and to not be afraid to use it.
Anyway that's my radio notes for today!
73
K7TYE
