Wednesday night on 160M was very unusual. The rare magic was there in force
for a while. I have not experienced anything like it since my last year as
S92SS back in '97. For a little while, the band sounded almost like 40 or 30
meters. There were plenty of signals strong enough to overcome the noise, and
for a good while my QSO rate was pretty good (for slow me) on 160M. However,
I still did not hear a pileup. There was just a steady succession of stations
walking into the spotlight. The period of 0000 to 0100 was the best for NA.
Thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, I was able to stay up late on a week night.
I am usually limited to Fridays and Saturdays.
I worked about 120 stations, not counting several dupes. Of those, 88 were
North Americans coast to coast. Among them were at least one CA (NI6T), a WY,
and a couple of MTs.
By 0300 UTC, the six high power VOA transmitters on the site where I live were
firing up and copy became much more difficult due to the raised noise floor. I
gave up on it at 0320. I had been on 20M SSB earlier, and by 0300 I had been
sitting at the radio for seven hours straight! I was very tired.
Wednesday night's results would have been impossible without my pennant
receiving antenna. The QRN was so bad on the "T" that I had great difficulty
copying even the strongest signals. On the pennant, it sounded like a
different band. That is not always true, but it was very much the case that
night. There have been times when I have heard better on the "T" than on the
pennant, and there have been times when I couldn't tell much difference.
An aside: The first NA station I worked among the Europeans was K1GUN. I have
worked him many times before; but I was happy, as always, to hear him. It was
a sign that more NA stations might be coming out of the noise before long, so I
should stick around. (I don't need to stay up late just to work Europeans. I
can usually work them well much earlier.) So, don't get fussy when you hear a
"big gun" work a DX station you know he has probably worked before. It is
often beneficial to the DX station and, ultimately, to you.
I am planning to take the 160/80M "T" antenna down over the Christmas holidays.
I need to disassemble my tuning networks in the "doghouse" at the antenna feed
point so I can pack the components for shipping. They contain heavy duty
inductors and vacuum capacitors that I want to keep. We are hoping to get our
personal effects on board a ship that is scheduled to be here on January 8.
I will retire to the US at the end of February at age 65 after 18 years
continuously assigned overseas in the Foreign Service with VOA.
73,
Charles Lewis - S9SS
(Just a few months shy of half a century as a ham now.)
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