Conditions Thursday night give a glimmer of hope that the band may yet truly
come alive for those of us here in the Midwest. F5IN was pounding in here
at an honest S9. DJ7AA also had a nice signal and was essentially S9. Many
additional European stations were on and copyable. Interestingly enough,
the beverages weren't really do much good. . . signals were just as copyable
from the TX antenna (elevated feed quarter wave).
Our packet cluster lost it's connection to the east for a while (we are on
the far west end of the system) so we were not getting spots. However, I
was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across JW5NM on 1828 with not many
takers. He had a nice signal, was peaking about 559 or 569, and was a new
one for topband. I spotted him but don't believe the spot went very far
back east.
In any case, last night's conditions were by far the best here in Iowa so
far this season. Is it too much to hope for a repeat of last year's Stew
Perry conditions for this year??? Things are beginning to look up!
73 and Happy Holidays to all. . . Dave
W0FLS
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