Last (Thursday) evening, during our first snowstorm,I saw a lot of packet
cluster spots for 160 ... although we have had spotty sunset openings in
Indiana in the past, I had seen a message here recently about good openings at
sunset to Illinois... what the heck, give it a listen... time was exactly
sunset 2231 when I turned on the rig....
At first I thought I was hearing locals or east coasters, but when they signed
they were European calls. GW3YDX was strongest here, hitting S7 to S9 on the
Kenwood meter using the dipole, a little lower using my NEW slinky beverage
but much better S/N. Easy contact with Ron.
Heard a number of OK's in QSO, worked OK1AWZ... Milan was down a bit from Ron,
about S5 on the meter, but his signal held up the longest...
At about 2300Z it was all over... signals were back down in the noise and had
to use the ESP filter to pull out calls. Except S58A was still hanging in
there, working mostly east coast.
The slinky pointed at Europe definitely was better than the longer
conventional beverage pointed due north or the ewe pointed east.
Hope it was the sunset conditions and not the snowstorm that caused the great
(but brief) opening..... my back still hurts from shoveling
mel KJ9C
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