15 Meters

[Jay Kesterson X4027]

>I'd be interested in hearing about how 15 was from the west coast -
>those guys must have been working JA until darn near JA sunset.
>
>73,  Ron  WA6DGX

Colorado isn't exactly the west coast, but here goes.  Started out to do a
single 15 even though I woke up Friday morning with a cold & sore throat.
My voice only lasted till about 17Z Saturday.  Sounds like you had much
better JA on 15 than I did.  At start of test my first 3 hours (from CT rate
graph) were all only 55.  03Z was 125 Qs and 04Z 80 Qs.  After that JA was
pretty much gone from here.  Could still hear a few of the louder JAs but no
rate.  VK/ZLs were still loud when I went to bed at 07Z, but not enough to run.
Worked UZ4FWD at abt 06Z and 9X5 + a 5N6 abt 0630Z on short path.
First 2 hours in the morning to Eu were abt 100 Qs per hour.  The band was
very long in the morning.  Heard N5AU struggle to get a UV9's call for abt
3 minutes, the UV9 had a good signal here.  UA9 is not where where I want
to be loud :-).  Don't exactly have a killer antenna, Mosley PRO-96 at 40
feet, but can run fairly well after the band matures.

In general JA volume doesn't seem to be as good here as it use to be.  W0UA
operated W0UN both weekends, single 10 meters, and broke the US record on
both modes.  He did it with big Eu runs (for us anyway).  The cw weekend
it seemed every Eu Russian with a rig would answer a CQ on 10 meters.

73, Jay  K0GU