Hello everybody,
first of all - my apologies for not being more active during this session
from Morocco. There was just to much to do preparing the whole
contest-station. So we made just a hand full of QSO on 160 before and
after the contest.
I really hope to do better around the CW part in two weeks time.
Reading the "Bizarre conditions 10/28 on top band" comments, here my
2 cents:
1. Setup
This time I wasn't alone on 160 - Falk, DK7YY made a great job assisting
me on this 'masochism'-band (only in SSB of course :-).
We've used TS-850 and a Ten-Tec Titan Amp with 1.5kW Output into
a 2-el Inverted-L phased array directly on the beach. RX-antennas were
5 excellent working Beverages (each about 550ft long). We were able to listen
with two operators into two different Beverage directions all the time thanks
to the Beverage switching box developed by Uli, DK4VW (6 Bev-RX-signals
can independently be distributed to 6 different operator positions, 2x 40m,
2x 80m, 2x 160m).
2. Condx
They were in average good during the first 23 hours on saturday.
After 6 hours we've finished the first night with 466 QSO, after 24 hours
we've had 766 QSO's, 131 more than in 1999.
Suddenly the K-index went from 1 to 6 and the band died. The whole
second day we managed only 184 more QSO's, with an especially poor
time between 1:00 and 4:00Z Sunday morning (our usual running time into
North America) with only 10 QSO's. The condx didn't really recover until
the end of the contest.
3. Listening conditions:
If you claim the bad receiving in Europe, keep in mind that specially
Eastern and Southern Europe (including the related Northern Africa) is
developing a kind of new "Iron Curtain" again in each contest.
Most of the stations have very poor receiving antennas and try to attract
their clients with very loud and overmodulated signals (Some of them we've
heard up to 10 kHz wide even from 1000 miles away).
So missing discipline and a wrong technical perception in Europe is the
real source of "one way propagation" during this contests.
This effect is not specially related to 160, same you will find on 75 and 40
meters.
Anyway - In Morocco I was lucky to be on the outscirts of this curtain,
having a perfect Beverage for North America (Beaming 310 degree,
with Europe in 40 degree) reducing the European QRM to nearly Zero.
Our 330 contacts with zone 2, 4, 5 and 8 would not have been possible
without this kind of secret weapon.
No zone 3 was heard this time, but strong signals from zone
9, 10, 11 and 13 were a certain relief. Many Carribeans were as always
to late on 160 - just showing up even after our sunrise (which is 1.5 hours
after central Europe) and were unfortunately also not very active during
their sunset - so they've missed the "easy multiplier".
Example how to do it was P40W - he got us with his QRP signal in one shot.
Nevertheless our problem was too to break the European curtain mentioned
above with our "QRP" signal (At least in European terms). At least we got
zone 17 this time, but zone 21 was missing.
At the end of the day we finished with 951 Q's, 16 zones and 77 countries.
CW will be for sure another story and I'm looking desperatly forward to
hand CN out once again on 160.
Cu soon from Morocco again,
vy73,
Joerg, DL8WPX / YB1AQS
160m bandcaptain CN8WW
Visit us at http://www.dl6fbl.de/cn8ww
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