Hi Dietmar
Was able to make a CW contact with ZL1AZ at his SS, 0715 UTC Thursday.
I am in Northern New Jersey so an 8900 mile 2 way QSO to New Zealand.
The propagation is there. Just need to get thru the noise (basically). I
have a strong bias toward CW and only resort to FT8 when the DX station
makes that the mode. The DX station controls the modes used for contacts
so I only use FT8 when the DX contact leaves no other options. I only
run 100 watts to a short inverted L now on 160 but will be in better
shape with 1 KW and better antenna in the future as I see the band can
be worked for much DX on CW with the right setup.
Thanks for your efforts.
Paul - W2NMI
On 11/22/2023 4:43 PM, Dietmar Kasper wrote:
GM topbanders
propagation was not good. No US on CW but terrible crashes from thunderstorms
between Singapore and Tarawa.
The complete north was a thunderstorm, just see
https://www.accuweather.com/en/tl/national/weather-radar
Took my free time what actually was adicted to sleep to improve US beverage. It
was extended in length
and converted into a two wire beverage also to cover backside to Indian Ocean.
Had to pay the price for extra sunshine and had to take some sleep in the
evening, so missed the US time.
As soon as I was away the station was hijacked by the FT-lovers to play their
computer games.
Spots show that computer cannot work US better as humans during thunderstorm
crashes, so most contacts
were loud JAs and US stations we already worked in CW.
I feel like the last person on earth fighting for the CW mode on topband.
However FT lovers
were not seen when it came to put out the beverages, look for the noise source
near the property or
to reconstruct the beverages far away during hours and hours of hard labour.
Originally it was planned to have another 160m antenna on second location but
nobody wanted to do the
work - is is so much easier to take over a good working CW station when the
lonely after many nights
tired person is away for a while.
Band was closed most parts of the night but a few loud JAs (mostly dupes)
called in. At sunrise
we had a short opening starting with G4AMT followed by I3, ON, EI, DL, HB9 and
then the sun was
up and the band was dead again. These are the moments I like so much to do the
real top band DX
what you can hear and feel - and good to know lot of the person behind the call.
Artificial intelligence just clicks the contact and goes ahead - obviously our
future :-)
OK - lets bring this DXpedition to an end and this will be my last entry in
this group or in
any other group mostly addicted to the FT modes.
73 Dietmar DL3DXX
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