Strange times - and strange conditions - in the 1999 CQ WW CW at VK6VZ.
The first day of the CQ WW CW was my son Sam's 2nd birthday, so
preparations were very limited and I have visitors from the UK, so the
actual operating time was also limited. Unfortunately, my father in law
had a heart attack a couple of days before, so this also put a large damper
on things.
However, as sunrise approached, the adrenaline level started rise and I was
in the operating chair, ready to go. Unfortunately, the propagation to
Perth wasn't ready to go at all. The band was effectively shut in an
easterly direction from here, with Tom W8JI barely S4 and S2/3 signals from
W8LRL.
450km to the south east of me, Mike VK6HD was having a ball, working 80
North American stations in the first couple of hours. I just sat and
listened to Mike, (who was mainly using his vertical antenna - which
usually means my conditions are hopeless) with the occasional check of the
band, but the lead curtain had come down. My first QSO was with VQ9IO at
1813Z...
Addding to my woes, the 400' east-west Beverage seemed to have died...
I spent five or six hours on the band during the night, working only VQ9IO
until 2044Z (about 20 minutes before sunrise) when V8A got into the log.
After that, there a brief European opening and C4A, RA3DOX, YC0LOW, HA8BE,
4N9BW, RW2F and HG6N were worked, the latter at 2111Z- about 8 minutes
after sunrise. Best got-away was Jeff at A61AJ, who peaked at S5 - S6, but
I just could not get through the pile-up.
After breakfast, my wife Deb took the visitors and the kids swimming, so I
could fix the Beverage. The temperatures hit 30 Celcius about 8am and I
worked on the Beverage matching box in the full glare of the sun for around
two hours, after finding water had got into it over winter and the shield
connection on the feeder had gone open circuit.
At sunset, a somewhat jaded VK6VZ got back into the operating chair and
started CQing on 1.824, with lots of QRN to S7 and bursts over S9. Hey
presto, the band opened like a curtain, with N4UK the first NA station in
the log at 1107. About an hour later the opening had just about petered
out, but there were 35 NA stations in the log.
Most of the stations worked were on the eastern half of the country, with a
particularly good opening into the southern states, but the QRN was
terrible. My saviour was the revitalised Beverage, without which I would
worked less than half the stations I did.
I then went to bed and overslept, getting up very tired about 45 minutes
before sunrise - to find the band wide open to Europe. After sending
quick 'GM' to Mike VK6HD, who had a good pile-up going, I thought Mike sent
something like 'E4 2 up'. I quickly tuned up and found E4/S59R on 1.8345
at RST579 - yippee!
After about six minutes of calling, Jaro SU9ZZ called E4/S59R and they went
QSY to 14MHz - blast!
Later, I spoke to Mike on the phone to compare notes. It turned out that
he had been telling me that he was working an SP - and my scrambled brain
had managed to turn this into 'E4 2UP'! After me being this lucky, I guess
it was too much to ask that I actually worked the E4...
In the hullaballo of trying to find new ones and work CN8WW and A61AJ, I
only worked UT7IY, UR6IM and GM7V. Joerg at CN8WW was not heard at all,
whilst Jeff was heard from 2059 until three minutes after my sunrise, but
again I could just not get through his large pile-up (his signals were down
from the previous morning).
The other strange piece of propagation was that although the E4 was a
strong signal, I could hear nothing of Riki 4X4NJ, only a couple of hundred
kilometres away.
In summary, there were no new countries for me, but quite a lot of
excitement, considering the propagation at sunspot maximum and the personal
circumstances.
Vy 73,
Steve, VK6VZ
CQ 160 - the Twilight Zone
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