Yesterday we had to fix the antenna coupler. It was not possible to tune the antenna on the 80 m band. We checked the coupler and we could see that the screw on the 16/81 m antenna port got loose and the relay demaged.
We checked the coupler and we could see that the screw on the 160/80 m antenna port got loose and the relay was damaged and had to be replaced.
Fortunately we had replacement one. We had to remove the coupler from the pole, replace the relay, than back to the pole. It took more than three hours to getting back to the bands.
There were very strong QRN on all the bands.The propagation to Europe was not so good yesterday evening than before. The signals were very week on the 30 meters band and the QRN was getting stronger and stronger as the thunderstorm was getting closer and closer. Finally I had to go QRT at 11:40 UTC due to the heavy T-storm and tropical rain. It was not possible to be back to the bands for more than 7 hours. Early in the morning George was CQ-ing for more than one hour, but he could not get over to Europe, despite he could hear strong stations from there. The QRN still strong all the bands. The signals from State side on the 17 and 15 meters were also weaker. The sunspot number dropped back from 45 to 34. Today the weather is still rainy, the temperature dropped back to 27 C degree. We had to take T shirt, because it is cold. Hi-hi. The QSO number is exceeded the 7,000. We upload the log to the LotW and to the logsearch daily.
73, Pista and George
