All - the morning openings to Europe continue and seem to be gaining in
strength. For the past month - the morning polar path has been there more
often than not. It has been pretty consistent during the past two weeks.
This opening from Oregon seems to be best starting a couple of hours before
sunrise. It has never been best just before sunrise - and almost always
loses steam about an hour before sunrise. W7RH in Arizona had even worked
some of them - which is amazing to me.
This is not a long path opening - the heading is North from this QTH.
Another interesting event happened yesterday - while I was testing my new
EU beverage - LY7M was being heard 90 minutes before sunset. This wasn't
all due to the beverage as I could hear his signal on the TX antenna some.
It wasn't until sunset that I could get his attention for a QSO however.
Maybe it is time to add some more radials... am still just using 11 of
them with the loaded 98 foot tower.
>From my perspective - this all adds up to conditions being better than they
have been for the past 8 years. These are the types of openings that
occurred during the last "peak" during 2008 and 2009.
Hopefully - the good conditions will continue into next weekend for the
Stew Perry event. Rules and plaque information can be found here -
http://kkn.net/stew
73 Tree N6TR/7
Manning, OR
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