Building for 80, Listening to 17, Ragchewing on 20

Just a quick Sunday morning report from Rome: With my 20 meter DSB rig finally tamed, I've been trying to decide which band to build for next. Italian hams just got access to more of 40 meters (now 7.0 -- 7.2 vice 7.1 MHz) so for a while I was thinking of 40. But 40 is pretty quiet at 5 am here, while there ARE stations operating on 80 at that time. So I'm building for 80. Actually I am rehabilitating a DSB rig that I built in London for 40. This morning I changed the coil in the VFO and have it percolating nicely from 3.55 -- 3.8 MHz.

I've been having a great time on 20 DSB. We have a local roundtable in Rome each night at 2030 local. I0YR, IK0JNI, IKOJMH, and I0ZY are all regulars. Very FB. Yesterday afternoon I worked Renato IZ1MJU up in Torino. He too was running a homebrew station. It is rare to have an HB-HB qso, especially on phone.

Right now I am tuned to my old stomping ground on 17 meters, listening to my old friend Chris, SM0OWX. I'll have to get that 17 meter rig going...

I should have another SolderSmoke podcast next weekend. I've added some stuff to the blog page: Check out the slide shows (2 of them) and the Dilbert Knack animations.

73 from Rome.