From an hour of casual operating this morning, it appears that some really good DX is down in the bottom of the CW portion of several bands, but the pileups are much lighter than usual because so many people are operating in the phone contest this weekend.  :-)  Nice time to go shopping for some CW DX, says I. 

The original poster said very plainly he wanted an antenna mount for 20 and 10m.

I just got two bands confirmed on LOTW; sure do appreciate it!  Thanks, 3D2RX crew!  You guys had a GREAT operation!

Martin, this isn't an answer to your question--I'm not smart enough for that. ;-)  But I wanted to add one vague opinion, and there are plenty of people who do not agree with me on this.  But when I'm playing with my monoband HF mobile antennas, I work to get them nicely resonant at the desired frequency (X=0 at 18.150, for instance) and THEN worry about SWR.  I find that the antennas often have about 2:1 SWR when they're nicely resonant, and then I add a bit of a coil or a capacitor at the feedpoint to get the SWR down a bit more.  This seems to work for me, and it seems to produce good results.  But, as I said, lots of people don't agree with me on that.    And I'm going to stay away from the whole "bonding/testing" issue--though I've always found that with bonding, more is better.

73 and GL!    --ken

Rick, with my last car, I didn't have a good spot for a bumper mount, and the rest of my options were pretty limited, both by the car (2006 xB, about the same size and shape as a shoe box), and the fact that I park in a low garage.

I wound up screwing the "towing eye" into the chassis, taking out a little rectangular panel in the plastic "bumper" to do so.  This is how you'd attach a chain to tow the thing, I guess.  Then I bolted your basic 3/8x24 mount to the towing eye.

This worked fairly well, considering.  BTW, I thought I would have a good connection to the car's frame via the metal towing eye screwed into the metal frame, but I still needed to run some braid bonding straps from the antenna mount to the car frame to make it work well.  It didn't look great--that may be a consideration for you.  But if you've got a towing eye on your car, it might be worth considering.

Photo at  http://people.duke.edu/~kuzen001/ac4rdmobile.htm   the photo that shows the towing-eye mount is bigger than it looks on the screen--you can save it and zoom in if you want.  Email me off the forum if you want more information.  73 GL!  --ken

An hour ago, I sat down to the radio; 15 meters sounded pretty dead.  After a minute, I heard a JA, not too strong, calling CQ.  I gave him a call--and there was something wrong with my antenna tuner.  High SWR, wouldn't tune up, so I was only putting out 10-20 watts because of the foldback circuit on my transceiver.

But the JA sent "RD? RD?"  So I called him again, and we had a short QSO despite my antenna problems. 

Just MHO, but if you're feeling bored, tune around a band that sounds quiet or dead, and listen carefully--there just might be a QSO waiting in there if you have the patience to dig it out! 

Bob, don't you need to factor in a correction for atmospheric pressure and the Coriolis effect?

Don, I imagine the answer is "it depends."   Depends on what you want to know and how you let it guide you.  The ARRL's report (Thanks, Todd!) is all I ever look at.  But I also don't let it rule my life.  I guess it's helpful, but as AD6KA said in another thread on eham recently, there's no substitute for *listening*.   I'll tune across a band listening carefully; even when a casual sweep of the band sounds dead, listening carefully often brings up gems.  And I'll often call CQ a few times, even if propagation is "poor" for that band and I'm not hearing anything.  You never know.

Last year the little band/prop summary said 10 meters was "poor" all day, but with some careful listening I worked a ZL with 5 watts from my "back yard portable" setup.  :-)  If I  only listened to the official reports, I wouldn't have tried 10m that afternoon.  :-)  So:  "It depends."

Valerie, congratulations!  I bet you'll have a BUNCH of fun!  You might want to try sending your CQ at no faster than you can copy, so people know what your comfortable working speed is.  But more important is to get out there, give it a try, and have some fun!  You'll miss a few letters here and there, I still do after 24 years, but I promise you, you'll have a great time!  73 GL!  -ken

MFJ has a combination 2/6m antenna, the 1728.  I've got one on my car; only used it a few times but it seems to work OK.  Don't recall seeing a 440/2/6 combination, though.

Hamsticks might be a bit tough.  Something very similar, though, might be a system like mine:  I've got a 54" aluminum mast mounted at bumper level.  There's a quick release at the top, and then I have Hustler resonators pretuned for each band I want to work.  Say I'm on 20m, to change to 15m I just pop off the 20m resonator/whip and pop on the 15m one.  Not as convenient as a screwdriver, but it works pretty well, and it's cheap, and easy to experiment with.  I use a 12m resonator on 15m, with a longer whip and a capacity hat, a 17m resonator on 20m, and so on--gives a bit more efficiency.    I'll post a link: the car has changed but the antenna is pretty much the same:

http://people.duke.edu/~kuzen001/ac4rdmobile.htm

BTW, Cecil's "bugstick" is also a really nice possibility.  I've been meaning to build one of those for a long time, just haven't done it yet.    73 GL!  --ken

Patrick, you might be better off getting to know some local hams, join your local club if you have one, and start talking to people.  If you ask 10 hams for an opinion on what rig to buy, you'll get 12 different opinions.  (Two will change their minds after the first response.)  ;-)

It will help a bunch if you can get your hands on a few different rigs, see what looks logical and feels good to you.  Personal taste has a lot to do with choosing a rig for HF.  And just about any modern-era HF transceiver will be a good starting point for you, if you can find one in good condition at a good price.  But which one you'll enjoy most is a different question.

By the way, it's also not a huge deal.  You may pick one radio, and by next year you're realizing it isn't great for RTTY, or has poor receive audio on phone, or whatever.  But by then you'll have a better idea of what you like and don't like on HF, and you may be wanting a different radio by then.   You can always sell the old one, or keep it as a backup!

73 GL!  --ken

Allan, there's a nice list of "official" (by DXCC standards) countries at:  http://www.arrl.org/files/file/DXCC/dxcclist_jan_2013a.txt

You can also pay a few bucks for a paper version from the ARRL, which is nice, but it sounds like you (same as me) would rather import the data into something you've created yourself to track countries worked/QSLd, bands & modes, etc. 

It sounds like you're getting a case of "DX Fever."    It's usually rapidly progressive, and while it can be ameliorated in some instances, it never really goes away.    It's also a lot of FUN!  73!
  -ken

Milverton, I hate to be one of those guys who adds an unnecessary reply just to say "me, too!"  But I'd like to second both the endorsement for Alan's site, and the THANKS so very many of us owe to Alan for creating and maintaining such a fantastic resource.   I've been doing mobile HF for probably 15 years now, but WWW.K0BG.COM is the first place I check when I have a question or wonder about something.

Three cheers for KH6CC and KH6ZM!  :-)  Good guys, indeed!