Day of the YL

So Ive been following the promotion of "Day of the YL" on Facebook for the last couple of weeks, advertised for today and tomorrow, 21st and 22nd May, and to be honest I have been looking forward to this, thinking of possible pile ups and working stations for the day.  I got into the chair and prepped myself for the onslaught, only to find the bands were totally rubbish and propagation wasnt keeping to its part of the deal lol.

I still have not heard (up to the time of this blog at 7pm) one YL station on, I have asked this question on the Facebook page and have been informed there are about 4 of them on, or were on, but I havent heard them, nor have I seen them spotted either.  To be fair, the bands are crap, even 20m and 15m, my usual haunts, are rubbish to the point where I cant even hear European stations!!! Whats up with that, usually I have Italian and German stations coming out my ears lol.

So I did a bit of research and according to our website www.ei1nc.com (where the Solar Terrestrial Data is contained lol) I have discovered 80m - 20m and only "fair" whilst the rest of the bands are "poor" and the SFI is only 84.  Could this day get any worse???

Anyhow, I did manage to speak to a few English stations, one of them a CASHOTA activation on 40m (as it is International CASHOTA weekend) and that has been my lot for the day, I even called consistently on 40m and 20m and didnt even get a static noise in response, so my expectation of the day has been dashed by the atmospheric conditions.

Hopefully when I am activating Mallow Castle next weekend, the conditions will allow it not to be a total failure, maybe the bands will pick up a bit this evening, well see how it goes.

Ciao for now, 73, Lisa