What a surprise!
I found the 160M QRN level to be down a little last night and decided to give
it a try. It took many CQs before my first contact, which was with SM6CCO. In
the first half hour I made only eight contacts and was about ready to QRT when
VE3DO came out of the noise. A pretty good run of North Americans ensued. Some
of the best signals were from west of the Mississippi!
Here is an alphabetized list of all the calls I logged last night. I hope they
are all correct.
5Z4DZ
AE7H
AG8B
G0TSM
K0RF
K0YW
K1DT
K1FZ
K1GUN
K2NV
K3UL
K4JLD
K4MQG
K4WM
K5UR
K8RYU
K9BWI
KE9I
KF3B
KV0Q
KV4FZ
N0AV
N0FW
N0STL
N0US
N1AC
N1JP
N1SV
N2ZX
N3NA
N4ZO
N5ORT
N5TY
N6SS
N7UA
N8GZ
N9IW
N9US
NO8D
NW6S
OH2PJ
OH5BM
PY2DO
PY2PA
PY2RO
RX4HZ
SM6CCO
UA4HTZ
UA6CW
UA9KAA
V51AS
VE3DO
VE3NE
VE3QAA
VE3RM
VE3ZI
W0BV
W0FLS
W0JX
W1FV
W1GL
W1IBQ
W2LK
W2RU
W2VO
W3GH
W4FQ
W4GF
W4OW
W5IZ
W5OZI
W5UN
W6RJ
W7UT
W8FJ
W8HB
WA4TT
You can see that there are numerous stations from the western states in the
list.
If you were in there calling and didn't make it, it was not due to QRM. I
worked worked nearly every station that emerged from the QRN sufficiently.
There were seldom more than two stations at a time sufficiently above the noise
to be objects of my interest. More commonly, only one at time was readable
enough through the noise to attract my attention. As usual, I did not hear a
pileup. The QRN is nearly always your competition here, not the "big boys!"
My usual QRN of the constant "grind" type was down a bit, but I still had very
frequent sharp static crashes. As a consequence, I needed numerous calls from
most stations in order to piece together their call signs. A few stations
missed out again because I couldn't lead them to give me the many, many repeats
of their call sign that I needed.
One mistake many stations made was to come back to me with a complete exchange
after I had sent only a partial call followed by question marks. Under my
receiving conditions, it is better to concentrate on my getting the call sign
correct first before sending me a report. I can usually decipher the numbers
of a signal report through the noise much more easily than the characters of a
call sign. By sending the RST repeatedly before I get your call sign, you waste
some of your time in the propagation spotlight and increase your risk of fading
away before the exchange is completed.
Another interesting thing about this very magical opening was that my pennant
was totally useless this time. The transmitting antenna was the receiving
antenna for all these contacts. The pennant heard little but noise. It will
usually be at least as good as the transmit antenna, but not this time.
I was fully convinced the season was over by now for any good openings to North
America. One never knows! That's what keeps the fascination radio holds for
me alive after nearly fifty years as a ham.
73,
Charles Lewis - S9SS
http://groups.msn.com/s9ss
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