Hi VHFers
Tropo was poor on 222 last night, although there were some QSB peaks
that made people get very strong for a short period. I made no long
distance contacts last night. I tried with K3SK at 575 miles. I could
tell he was there on Q65B-30 but neither of us got ant decode at all
over a ten minute attempt. I made 25 contacts with individual stations
and had a few multi mode contacts with a few. N3EXA had a great signal
from FN20. Brian was getting set up for the January Contest. From my
perspective, his 222 setup is FB! I tried with K9MRI on meteors, but
the evening meteor rate was very low. I copied one short burst that did
not decode. K9MRI had one burst on his end. We quit after about 10 or 15
minutes. Some nights can be good for meteors, but last night was not! I
was listening to W1AUV trying to work W1GHZ in northern VT. I was
hearing Tommy just fine with my beam at 255 degrees. He should peak at
239 degrees, so I turned the beam and he actually faded out. I went back
to 255 and he was good at about 559. I looked at the map afterward and
saw that his azimuth to W1GHZ went up the spine of Vermont and Stratton
Mountain is right there at my beam heading of 255 degrees. I am pretty
convinced that Stratton was the reflector, or scattering body.
Some stations worked from my failing memory: N1MIW, N1YCQ, WA1MBA,
N1ROZ, W1AUV, WZ1V (Good Buddy Ron), KA1OJ, WW1Z, WA2LTM, WA3NUF, N3ITT,
N3EXA, W9KXI, KA2ENE (worked on SSB,CW, and FT8!), N2JQR, W1AIM, W1GHZ.
There were others but I am not sure . Somehow I missed K1TEO who was on
FT8. I did count up 25 individual stations. I never found WA3EOQ last
night and W8ZN was also missing, so the long distance QSOs were Philly
and central and western New York at 350 miles or so. A look at the tropo
map, showed nothing other than some slight coastal enhancement from the
CT shoreline down the coast to VA. I had poor luck in that direction. I
can sometimes work K3SK on Q65 but that did not happen even though we
tried hard! It was sad not to see N1GC scaring up QSOs on the Chat page.
His presence is missed.
Look at the bright side, we are getting to the crown of winter and then
things will start warming up as the days get longer. My earliest Sunset
was on December 8 at 4:07 PM. Latest Sunrise was on January 3rd at 7:16
AM. So here, on Jan 10th my Sunset was at 4:27 PM a gain of 20 minutes.
In the morning we have picked up about seven minutes in the last week.
The length of daylight has not changed much, less than 15 minutes, but
the added daylight in the evening is noticeable. I always get happy
when the days get longer! Hopefully we will get some good weather over
the weekend for the January VHF Contest. Lets hope so!
73
Dave K1WHS
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