To Jim and all,Pleased I am hearing a bit of traffic
again....Unfortunately it gets a bit late at night for me..Bed time
usually 1300z or 11pm my time...Tree has been good all this week and I
have been having regular contacts with Bob W7LR....I still keep my daily
sked with Tom W8JI now going for 10 years...We don't often miss the
contact except for high qrn..Even though the band sounds in the doldrums
it is supporting workable Dx from the American North and South
continents..Once daylight saving time starts I won't be able to stay
around for West Coast DX...European Dx at my sunrise dominates my summer
operation...BTW my final tally of EU stations worked last season from
Nov to the end of March was 667 contacts, among these a few new
countries...For some reason the average EU signals are more consistent
and stronger around my sunrise than the average from the US etc in
my evenings....Perhaps this perception comes from sig to noise near
sunrise compared to the general band noise after sunset...Interesting
observation though...I do believe though, that you have to be on 160
regularly all the time to really get that "feel" and intuition of how
the band is performing...I find the band conductive more often than
not..It is only local QRN that seems to keep people off most of the
time...I generally suffer S1 to S3 noise during the winter and apart
from storm static propagated in from VK2/4/5/8 even summer conditions
are tolerable most of the time..
I must note over the past two months my best signal strength readings
have been off the little transmitting vertical...I generally use the 90
foot inverted V for reception but recently signals have been up to 2 S
units down compared to the vertical...I have no other receive
antennas....Not sure why this is happening...Both antennas are fully
resonant and matched properly....Maybe we have lots of low angle stuff
arriving....
Ah well, I hope that things soon improve and more stations start looking
around...Propagation is there most of the time just waiting for us to
take full advantage...
Good Dxing to all......73..Bob VK3ZL...
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|