As Luke VK3HJ has stated, the QRN was bad here in VK3 and probably all
over VK, including at VK6LW, I expect.
But I pushed through the QRN pain barrier and even called CQ test a few
times, but no replies, not even from locals or ZL's.
So I ended up only calling any strong signals heard and accepted that
even though they may be strong, they might not be listening for my
direction, which was probably the case with JA4UYB.
Northern Europe did come good, but not until right at my sun rise time
(1856utc) and surprisingly continued good until about 30 minutes after.
Maybe that was because of my "Low Dipole" , being only 100 fth and
things might have been better or worse if I had a good vertical.
Nothing even heard from southern or western Europe, which includes the UK.
Only the Ukraine, USSR and Lithuania. How odd.
Both RD4F and UD4F were strong and about the same strength and that
caused me some confusion in the QRN. Did I get UD4F call correct, yes or
no? So I wasted some time to clear that up.
ZF9CW was good and strong at 1130utc, like in the CQ WW DX Contest, when
he obviously pointed his antenna my way. He must have a great
directional antenna system and heard me first call.
There were only a few strong signals from North America and that was
only after 1220utc (no sun set peak here anytime this year, as far as I
have noticed), which is getting late here, being 11.30pm local and with
all the banging and crashing, up to 9+30dB, with the S meter never going
less than 9, that no doubt would continue all night, I gave up and went
to bed.
Maybe there was a peak in signal strength to USA later, after 1230utc,
like what seems to be the trend of recent times, but it was not worth
taking a chance on.
Last year was much better and this year would have been good, if we had
lower or no QRN.
Never-the-less, I look forward to the next contest, like the CQ WW 160m
CW at the end of January and then SSB at the end of February, when our
QRN levels usually are less.
Cheers, from Ron.
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