propagation in 11m

Today (Feb 9th) reception at home on the Hi band was so shatteringly loud at times that eventually I took my old fave rig (S'star 360fm) and Sirio magmount whip outside town to see what could be achieved. The trouble was not low propagation, but an excess of it, with huge signals in places that were trying the rigs aged filtering rather too fiercely.  There was the USA's Eastern seaboard and possibly farther west as well. Plus the usual gang from everything between France and Greece. But eventually I found a spanish op. who could hear my signals well, although his english was only just better than my Spanish, (I don't speak Spanish) we bumbled through a several-minute qso with half understood transmissions either direction. Of course without his English there'd have been no QSO past 5-9, location, working condition, 73 and "Thankyou/Gracias"

But it was FUN. unlike working the kosher HF amateur bands, which is mostly routine.  I wasn't surprised to hear South of Spain on 11, but was to hear the USA so clearly - albeit a little briefly as each such call received a storm of Europe's big stations scrabbling to get a transatlantic 2-way.

I don't do QSLs any more.  The P.o. box price is just ludicrous, as most Royal Mail services are these days., So might be looking at eQSL, if that's allowed.  To keep 11m traffic records well separated from anything vaguely "amateur". I'd bought a cobra power mic for my Uniden boarded rigs, and this was its first real trial. Got good reports. I'd got this as I couldn't find my old Astatic Teardrop or Minuteman mics. Of course, as often happens, inside a week of the new mic arriving both the above Astatics were located. My "Minuteman" is one needing a small 7v battery that I believe is now deleted... A great pity, as it used to drive these radios to make them sound quite fantastic in use on SSB. So some workaround will be needed if indeed that battery is now defunct.

It really was very satisfactory to find that my old dinosaur radio - that I bought used in about 1987-88 - was still working almost as well as when it first came to me. some rotary controls are pretty noisy, especially the click-on detent.

I've a possibly older 148 mk2 with NO alterations from new but its meter's needle has jammed about S7. No extra bands, no alphas, no switchable RogBeep. It'll get a proper on air check too, might send it to Nick down south for a bit of alignment and cleaning those dirty contacts in the switches.  Been a while since I saw a completely unadulterated mk2 Cobra. I was told an old trucker had used it as a cab rig mostly for local nattering but also listening "elsewhere". Didn't believe in modifying rigs, seemingly.