I agree Don - hopefully tomorrow night's Pre-Stew will be much
different. QRN is at winter levels here in Arizona, yet TB is silent.
On 10/21/2016 11:03 PM, Donald Chester wrote:
Here it is Friday night, with relatively little QRN, but only a couple of
signals are audible across the entire 160m band. 80/75m has a few more signals
than that, but it's sparsely occupied as well. Usually by this late in the
season one will hear plenty of activity in the evening, especially on weekends.
I have noticed this dearth of activity for several weeks now; it's as if this
year's radio season hasn't got off the ground yet, despite the fact that we are
almost midway through autumn and the summer QRN has substantially subsided.
Is this a trend, and is this becoming the new normal? They keep telling us we
now have a record number of hams in the FCC data base, over 700,000. Those
hams certainly aren't on the air, at least not on 160, 80 or 40m. I can
remember not that many years ago when at this stage in the season on a quiet
weekend night one had to scout around to find a clear spot to call CQ. So far
this year, the bands have all had vast swathes of unused frequencies, but the
signals that are heard appear to be at normal strength, so the bands
apparently aren't dead.
Don k4kyv
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