At 05:33 PM 2/25/2001 -0500, Bill Fisher W4AN wrote:
>I was at K1EA's station at the bottom of the last cycle for CQWW CW and
>the differences between here and there are more pronounced than a sunset
>time would indicate. I believe that their proximity to darkness makes an
>even bigger difference. I believe the year we were up there we could have
>worked Europeans on 40 meters every hour of the contest. We started
>running on 40M at 18:30Z and could have done so earlier. There is simply
>no way for me to do that down here with essentially the same antenna for 3
>or 4 hours later. Yet sunset time is only 60 mins different at the
>most. So, sunset times do tell part of the story, but not all. Proximity
>to darkness is also an indicator.
I agree with that to a point. At some point you end up too far north and
the auroral oval starts to eat away at signal strengths much of the
time. Of course, in CQWW the stations to the north seemed to be able to
work more VEs also - like W2PV in the 80's and K3LR more recently. I know
I've worked Europeans at noon on 40 meters during mid-winter, and I'm sure
that it has to do with me being close enough to the area of twilight or
darkness to the north of me - darkness would start at 67n at noon in
mid-winter and twilight would extend a couple of degrees south of that.
Another major difference between LPL and LR is that LPL has a better shot
at central and southern Eu, where there is more activity, and that the path
to Europe from LPL is less likely to cross the auroral oval than the path
from LR to Eu [tnx W2UP for reminding me]..
-- Tom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail: frenaye@pcnet.com YCCC --> http://www.yccc.org/
Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444
--
CQ-Contest on WWW: http://lists.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests: cq-contest-REQUEST@contesting.com
|