The band is rock’in in case you have missed it.
I went for a walk with the xyl yesterday afternoon, and returned to the house
at around 3 pm local (2200z). The sun was still high in the sky (thats a
relative thing at this time of year at 51 deg N). Sunset is not until 23:38z. I
noticed that the VE6JY skimmer was spotting RL3A so checking the band was in
order.
Sure enough, the waterfall was full of EU traces. This is a full 1.5 hrs.
before sunset. I logged 31 EU in the 1.5 hours before my sunset.
UA,CU,GW,YL,UA9,OK,YO,DL,SM,HB9,UY, LY,HA. My wife and I watched a movie last
night, but I could see on my RBN the band continued to be wide open. I spent
another 30 min before going to bed and logged another 11 EU. Quite a number of
first time worked on 160m callsigns.
It looked like the band was in good shape across much of NA, with lots of other
WC joining in the fun, and a great many EU ops calling CQ. At one point, the
waterfall almost looked like a contest night.
The night before on Jan 3 z, I logged 52 EU, on Jan 2 z I logged 43 EU, and 24
EU on Dec 31. Some of the EU signals have been exceptionally strong. Almost
sounding like local NA stations.
The sunrise trans-polar path to JT, UA and EU has also been open most mornings.
For the 4 months starting September my log shows 1,222 EU QSOs with 421 unique
calls so far. 465 AS/OC QSOs with only 141 unique calls.
So far this season I have 99 DXCC worked on 160m.
The K has kicked up a bit so perhaps the condx will be muted tonight, but the
longer term forecast looks pretty good. It really is great to see so much CW
dx on TB these days!!
Get on the band and join in on the low-band DX fun.
73, de steve ve6wz
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