I tried my best to stir up something in the monthly Spartan Sprint last night, and wound up hearing nothing. Again. I looked a little later on 3830 and noticed there were only eight total scores there from SP entrants. Summertime is radio doldrums time and I’m pretty certain that accounts for some of the low turnout. Still, the old QRP events aren’t nearly as popular as they once were and it makes me wonder how long this decline will continue before they all go QRT?

Since I was in the shack I worked a couple of POTA stations and then several of the 13 Colonies stations (K2A, K2E, K2J, K2L, and K2M) though I’m not chasing these to any completion. I also worked Suad, running IT9/DK6XZ (remote via IT9) 599 both ways, steady copy as conditions seemed decent on 20. There was a little more DX to be had, but I decided to pull the plug at that point.

This morning I called CQ a few times on 20 and 30 meters (no takers, as usual) and once again my signals were being reported by the RBN in Europe and New Zealand so as far as I can tell, the bands are in decent shape again today.