Hello Bill!
> Nice job in the contest! Several NA guys asked me to
> tell you to stay on 80m for NA a bit longer.
When I have no QSO for 10-15 minutes I usually stop. Signal levels then are
too low.
I have given up 80 meters for NA in our late evening. Apart from day #1 we
have never again worked the continental
US on 80 meters. It was a complete loss of time time that could well be
spent elsewhere (30m, 40m)
more productively. I will give up these 80m sunrise W6 opening sessions
(14-16z); it just makes no sense and people
start getting mad at us in frustration since they simply cannot understand
the situation and we cannot change it.
On the vertical, in the 500 Hz position, noise level is S9+10 on both 80 and
160. On the K9AY the noise level is
S9+10 on 80 and S7 on 160. This was measured on a TS850 at noon. I have the
feeling that during nighttime
noise is even higher due to streetlights. When I am home in Germany, noise
on the 20 m high vertical is about S3,
and below S1 on the Beverage antennas. I can copy signals below noise, yes,
but they cannot be 20 dB below the
noise, that is too much for my human signal processor.
So better not to spread around any hope for 80 m NA. I am including our
current QSO statistics if you like to review
them. It shows a total of 276 QSOs for US and Canada, compared to some 15000
EU and some 4000 with
JA. This is just a little above 1%. Maybe it´s the wrong time of the year
but USA in general is a big problem here
not to speak of our receiving problems.
Last two mornings were not successful on 80 and 160. I started operating at
20z and 160 got quiet after around 22z.
Nothing happened at sunrise. I was not on in the evening hours (16-20z) but
that seems to be more. I will go for the
evening shift tonight and will go QRT around 22z tonight. I have to get up
at 02z for my flight to the Mount Everest.
For the next days I have not made up my mind, but will try to be on as long
as possible during our night hours.
We will finish low band operation on December 6 around 01z, so we have four
more nights. The low band antennas
will be the last to be disassembled on Monday morning so we will have the
full weekend for to improve our
80 and 160 m score. I doubt we will have better luck with US but I will keep
trying until the end. Also my friend
DL7MAE has still not made it into the 160 log.
73 Ben, 9N7RAI