On 12/22/2012 08:18 PM, Steve Ireland wrote:
On the 16 December, there was a nice opening into the eastern USA with
signals to S6, but the static and general atmospheric noise was about the
same level - a common phenomenon. As it is summer in the southern half of
the world, it is REALLY noisy! I ended up asking for heaps of repeats
mainly because of the noise.
Perhaps a comment from the other side of that same opening?
I called Steve a few times that morning but stopped because even
with a 200 Hz filter and audio peaking it was difficult to hear when
he came back to people through the callers. They were spread out
some but it only takes a couple who call too long or with
questionable/unfortunate timing to make things difficult when the DX
is S7 and the callers are 20 to 30 over S9.
Steve had a relatively small pile (10 callers at a time?) of
reasonably well behaved DXers. For me it was marginally OK working
simplex but I very likely might have missed it once or twice had he
come back to me. I heard Steve answer a few stations who did not
copy him right away due to the other callers (I'm assuming, because
there were others still calling and they subsequently seemed to hear
him just fine when in the clear). That may have slowed his potential
QSO rate somewhat but not drastically. With a few more callers or a
couple who are particularly eager it can easily go from that to
total chaos.
Of course there are times when there isn't enough space on the band
for all DX with multiple callers to go split.
73,
Paul N1BUG
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Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge coming on December 29th.
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