Following up on my negative report from yesterday, I have little better to
report today.
The volume of direct email I received after yesterdays negative report
amazed me. Most were "me too" comments. Seems to be quite a few of us who
are locked out lately.
Conditions last night were somewhat different than the preceding nights.
The biggest difference was the attitude on the band. I will be generous and
just call it a feeding frenzy. "Local" conditions were much better in that
midwest USA stations were 20 dB stronger than normal. Normally I don't have
a problem with loud stations effecting my RX because there aren't any
stations loud enough to bother me. Not so last night.
With one exception, I did not even hear a whisper out of any of the EU
stations on the band last night. The exception was a 15 second period at
0715Z when I could copy EA3VY. With a real EU signal to listen to, I was
able to determine that the bearing seemed to be skewed some what south of
the short path. The GCB to EA is 47° and Jose was best between 60° and 90°.
Going back over my topband logs for the 20 years or so, I find that I have
had worse Decembers. Also noted was that mid-January has been the best for
me to EU. Also of note, EA3VY appears in my log more often than any other
EU call.
Good luck to all!
73,
Larry - W7IUV
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