About 8 years ago - Bernie - ZS4TX showed up every night for about
a week with a great signal into Oregon. One local running 100 watts
and a quarter wave sloper had no problem working him during this
opening. It occurred at his sunrise and would last maybe only 5
minutes.
Well - Bernie showed up again last night - again at his sunrise -
and it appears that the Boring/Danhof pipeline is still in good
repair. While many stations were calling from all around the
country - he came right back to my call.
Hopefully, Bernie will be active for awhile longer. Keep a good
ear out around his sunrise. I worked him at 0336z. He seemed to
be favoring stations calling him slightly above the pileup.
The first time I ever heard Bernie - I was "reading the mail" and
tuned to his frequency - listening to this pileup calling some station
I couldn't hear (this happens a lot out west). However, at one
point, I realized I was hearing both sides of the contacts and
nearly broke the ON/OFF switch on the amplifier in excitement.
That was in November 1986.
These antipodial openings are typically very exciting - and provide
some advantage to the stations located nearest the furthest away. I
remember hearing ZS8IR calling CQ around his sunrise for five minutes
and only those stations near the antipod could hear him. That was
in March 1987.
Hopefully, this is a good harbinger of things to come with the DX
pedition coming in about a month to FT5X. I always regretted having
to go to work the one morning VK0IR was coming through to the west
coast - and this will be an opportunity to finally cross zone 39 off
the list (why did they have to move the line to include ZS8 in zone
38 anyway??).
Otherwise in the contest - VERY BIG signals from the east coast. It
sounded more like 20 meters. D4B had a big signal - as he always
does. The CT3s were inaudiable the times I listened for them and
no Europe was heard. Worked at least two KL7s - so they are out
there - it is just a tough QSO for the east coast. Missed La and
RI for WAS.
73 Tree N6TR / K7RAT
tree@kkn.net
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