May I thank all those who replied to my message about
160m conditions, or the lack of them.
Northern stations universally agreed that conditions
have been terrible. More southerly stations felt that
things were bad, but that there were occasional
openings. I'm not sure that proves anything we didn't
already know......
I should add that I monitor the band most evenings and
most early mornings, but that I tend not to transmit
unless I hear some DX signals. I should also add that
I looked again at my magnetic latitude and it is about
57N rather than 59N, and that the comparison with
G3RBP was made because in 35 odd years of operating
from there I can never recall such sustained zero
conditions.
Wednesday morning GMT there was a nice opening for me,
and several other NA stations, to western Europe. Even
so, signals were relatively weak. I was able to do a
few comparisons between my home 85' vertical and my
remote 5/8w vertical/300' high dipole. Depressingly it
seems there is not very much difference, but I will
still wait to see what happens when (if) the band is
fully open and possibly a lower angle of radiation is
more important.
73 and Season's Greetings to all
Roger
VE3ZI
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