I couldn't agree with you more Guy.
Condx were reported as being any where from poor to below normal for some to
being excellent to the best ever by others. The latter mostly being from
Eastern NA. It appears from the 3830 comments that some had more enhancement
than others and from slightly different areas of Europe and opening and closing
times differed a bit but all were Saturday evening in NA. Since I have only
been on 160M for 29 yrs now I can't comment about the 70's and 80's but in all
my time on the band since then I have never once seen any European station
being S9 here but Saturday night ( Sunday morning in Europe ) all the European
stations I worked were between S7 - S9 here.
It started Saturday night at ~2330z when I started being called by a few DX
stations - which rarely ever happens here. So I took the hint and quickly
started S&Ping Cluster spots and in 1 hour my score increased by ~60,000 pts.
In the next 4 hours I worked about 75 DX stations, mostly in Europe. I know
that really pales compared to others that experienced the opening but it took
me 7 years to work 60 DXCC on TB with LP and Saturday night I was able to do it
in ~4 hours. So that was huge to me. Then at 0430z EU signals suddenly dropped
right back down to ~S1 and I had a very hard time working any DX after that.
What I did work was a struggle, as usual.
So at least for some of us it was an amazing once in a lifetime opening - or at
least once every 30 years or so.
73,
Brian
VE3MGY
________________________________
From: Topband <topband-bounces+ve3mgy=hotmail.ca@contesting.com> on behalf of
Guy Olinger K2AV <k2av.guy@gmail.com>
Sent: January 28, 2020 10:10 PM
To: Roger Kennedy <roger@wessexproductions.co.uk>
Cc: TopBand List <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: CQ WW Contest
Hi Roger,
Just want to be sure we are both talking about the weekend of 25, 26
January, 2020, the weekend of the 2020 CQ 160 CW contest. If so, I must
register my decidedly firm impression that was the best 160 meter weekend of
my lifetime, what has to be a counterpoint of the amazing 1958 sunspot
maximum.
In the contest I worked 1349 stations including 339 10 pointers (almost all
the 10 pointers were European), let's just say 300+ European stations. In
all of that I worked a 160 meter worked all states (48 CONUS + AK & HI),
plus 9 Canadian provinces, 78 countries ("country" per the contest rules).
That was a claimed score from the southeast USA (decidedly not the
EU-advantaged northeast US) of 752,780.
It was, by an enormous margin, my personal lifetime best for any 160 meter
contest. The antenna did work very well, but, seriously, could not possibly
have accounted for that bump up, nor for sure could my personal operating
skills.
Just think we need to leave room for the idea that maybe the band was a bit
better than "open".
Station here K3 + KPA1500, Inverted L over FCP, no RX antennas (working on
that), NOT a superstation.
Wowser, I wonder if we'll get that again before the sunspots start in
again. I can hope.
73, Guy K2AV
On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 3:27 PM Roger Kennedy <roger@wessexproductions.co.uk>
wrote:
>
> Well conditions were reasonable over the weekend . . .
>
> I spent a total of about 3 hours on the band, and managed to work 48 NA
> stations through all the European QRM.
>
> I'm sure I would have worked a lot more, as I heard many others calling
> stations that were calling CQ . . . but I'm reluctant to put out a CQ call
> in a contest, as I don't want to work hundreds of Europeans (I'm up in the
> middle of the night to work some DX !)
>
> As I say, I wouldn't say conditions were particularly good, but the band
> was
> open.
>
>
> Roger G3YRO
>
>
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