Checking out 10m band conditions before ARRL 10m contest next weekend.

24 hours on 10m

 Next (December 14-15) weekend is the ARRL 10m contest this is both phone and CW contest and I will be taking part as CW only. I wanted to have a peek at conditions on 10m before the weekend arrived. I brought my WSPR  transmitter by ZachTek into action. I set it up for 10m only and let it run for 24 hours. This would give me an idea of the best times to be on the 10m band. I also plan on another 24-hour session from Thursday morning to Friday morning. 

Time stamp of when 10m is best for me

This session in the post ran from Tuesday morning until Wednesday morning. From my results, the band starts to come alive around 8 am local time and drops off at 8 pm local time. 10m seems to peak from noon to 3 pm local time here. After 3 pm it was still in good shape but was up and down until a sudden drop at 8 pm. The Kp index ranged from Kp3 to Kp2 over the 24 hours. My operating times will be morning to early evening mainly within North America.  

Antenna radiation pattern for 10m Hustler 4BTV

 

Antenna radiation pattern using WSPR

In a previous post, I mentioned I had purchased a Zachtek WSPR desktop transmitter. I found a great site one can use to go over the data collected regarding your WSPR transmissions. The site is called Grafana  GUI and can be accessed at the WSPR live site. The Grafana dashboard gives you information on solar weather from 5 minutes to 1 year.   Station-specific information such as antenna radiation pattern, spot data per band and time, map of where your signal is heard and finally it can be used for receiving and transmitting signals. I use the TX  data as I do not yet have a stand-alone WSPR receiver. There is a ton of information you can gather, my advice is to visit the site and look around. I ran my WSPR transmitter for almost 24 hours and below I  have included the Kp index for that time period as well as the antenna radiation pattern of my Hustler 4BTV. 

Click on all pictures to enlarge.