...Thanks for the praise, Mike, and you certainly don't need to!
Your equipment works just fine: I heard you before in FT8 here in Bavaria, at about 9100 km for your location.
Here's what my own FT8 (all time) log shows for the few of you mentioned in this post (Rich NE1EE isn't in it, as he may be using FLdigi instead, which, if so, I fully understand ;-):
AD9GE EM69
KD5KC DM61
VA3CJO FN25
My antenna is just a small home-brew in-house MagLoop (50 cm outer diameter) fed into a portable SONY ICF-2001D (equivalent US model: 'ICF-2010') portable radio.
Contrary to the past winter season when the band was packed with loud signals, this afternoon, my usual background log on 10 m only yielded quite few and mostly weak signals, see attached map. The dot size is proportional to the reported SNR. A very poor result in deed, not a single signal from North America, just a bit of sporadic-E to Southern Europe and some TEP for the Southern Hemisphere, really nothing to write home about...
Have a great day - and weekend!
73s Tobias
.-.-.
