Don’t Always Trust the Band Report

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2 Jan 2025

  With it being New Year’s day for North and South America and a half-work day for me I set my alarm with aspirations to play radio first thing in the morning. I woke up with plans to get on 10m. A quick check of the band report showed “poor” conditions on all the bands due to a geomagnetic storm that started the day before. I’ve always held the idea that if we go solely off of those reports we would miss out on a lot of contacts, as you never know until you press that PTT button.

  I started calling CQ on 28.320 around 2000z. That went on for 15 minutes with no responses. Things were not looking good. I spun around the dial and only heard a couple other stations on 10m, but they were very weak. Things started to open up around 2030z. N5KO was the first in the log and must have spotted me as soon after the calls began, and kept on coming, even with the “poor” conditions. I started noticing more and more callsigns from the southeast US, and many from Florida. 293 QSOs this morning during my 3 hours on the radio. Thanks everyone! Until next time. 73, AL

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