I am glad to hear T88WA is not at the hotel club station. The club
station has a low dipole on 160 which in the past has made a poor showing.
I managed to get a response from P29RO on 160 meter FT8 on Friday
morning, but didn't think it was a complete QSO. I am new to "hound"
mode and WSJT-X kept changing my transmit frequency. I think I was
calling at 1086 Hz, and when I got the response from P29RO, the program
moved my TX frequency to match the P29s QRG (504 Hz) and responded
there. Not sure what was going on. In any case, I was a bit stunned to
see that I showed up in the P29 log. I suppose our exchange meets the
bare minimum for a QSO - their computer decoded my call and signal
report and my computer decoded theirs. Definitely not as satisfying as a
clean CW QSO, but I am pretty certain they were too weak for that. Much
of the time I wasn't decoding them and couldn't see them on the
waterfall display.
73, Mike W4EF....................
On 11/5/2022 10:30 AM, Wes wrote:
Not making much noise here, but sure hearing a lot. I did work PJ4K
on 10/30 on SSB no less. I'm almost sorry to say I dropped down to
FT8 and worked 25 JA stations in a run. On 11/2 I worked DU7ET and
that's it from my modest station in the Sonoran Desert. The Pacific
expeditions, the mainstays from the west side of the country, are
non-starters. P29RO has decided no CW on TB because of hearing
problems (I know the feeling). A35GC hasn't shown up and T88WA is
supposedly still building an antenna. Unfortunately, the guys down
under seem to quit before I'm out of bed, even at 4:30 AM like this
morning. I think that after Bouvet, whether I work them or not, I'll
convert the inverted-L to something more useful.
Wes N7WS
On 11/5/2022 9:00 AM, David Raymond wrote:
Greetings Topbanders. . .
I've spent a considerable amount of time on watch this past week for
J28MD on Topband (CW). While they've spent a fair amount of time on
TB I haven't yet had success yet in spite of my ongoing efforts. I
believe it was this past Tuesday night when Joel, W5ZN, said they
appeared briefly out of the noise (about 10 minutes or so and did
have success with his BSEF-8 and Hi-Z 8 arrays in diversity) then
disappeared the rest of the evening. Wednesday night's opening to NA
was much longer starting on the East coast and slowly sweeping
westward with quite a few NA making it in the log (EC + 5's, 8's, &
9s', VE). Unfortunately the prop just never quite made it this far
west. They barely peaked out of the noise here in Iowa Wednesday
evening (NA time) just enough to get me excited and dump my call a
few times hoping for even a marginal QSO. . . but no cigar. It's a
little frustrating to see that they always QRT about 30 minutes or so
prior to their SR but they get credit for being on faithfully on CW
and FT8 as well. I know they're getting close to wrapping up but
hopefully they'll be on (CW) again this evening.
It's been good to have some DX operations QRV and bring some much
needed life to TB (which sure hasn't had much). . .TY0, 5V, and now
J28, A3, and T88. The prop has been very poor. CQing here in the
evening brings no DX responses and only a handful of EU EBN hits so
far this season. Thankfully mornings have activity from our very
stalwart VK friends (VK3HJ, VK2WF, VK6GX, VK6IR, VK6LW, others) but
only a handful of JA QSOs so far this season (8 to be exact). JA1LZR
gets kudos for being QRV almost every morning (NA time), but without
much prop, I think only limited success. I have yet to hit the
VK4CT RBN CQing here in the mornings. I don't think this is totally
attributable to the increased SFI. . . prop from here was only
marginally better two seasons ago when the SFI was very low.
All that said, I encourage everyone to get on and make some noise.
73. . . Dave, W0FLS (in Iowa)
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