Out of the 10 stations I worked, at least 4 were less than 200 miles away;
a new "close-in dx" record. In WZ1V's list every week, it seems that
almost all stations are easily within that range; not a luxury from the
boonies.
I never look at the red blobs since I'm too far inland for any coastal
ducting. As Dave has noted, they don't necessarily seem to coincide with
good dx, anyway - hi. About the only thing I take note of is if there is a
big "H" on top of or near my QTH. Regardless, I just ping stations on the
chat board and see if I can work them, even if all the propagation sites
say, "no way." 222 MHz can surprise you.
This session, stations in New England seemed a bit stronger (K1WHS, WZ1V,
K1TEO); west and south (K9MRI, N1GC) not so much, but easily workable. An
interesting anomaly was WA1NLG on Cape Cod. Norm posted that he heard my
cw as I worked K1WHS but I couldn't hear a thing from his 25 watts of ssb
(only 6dB down from my 100w) - no cw available from Norm. Even FT8 didn't
work. So much for reciprocity.
FM09 will be QRT next week as I'll be celebrating "Day of the Dead" in XE
land.
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