[CQ-Contest] Summary of reports of band condx - FD2003

[Ray Rocker]

> In short.. 10M was AWOL.  15M was spotty at best.. and when it was active it
> was short lived. 20M/40M tended to be the 'meat bands' and were usually
> active (but 40M was the big band on campus)
> 
> 80M.. in the later evening/overnight/early AM (till the D/E layers fattened
> up after sunrise) was fair and generated a decent amount of activity.

My observations from K5MDX in coastal Mississippi:

6:  Dead. Only a few locals. Fortunately our 6m op is a good sport
    and will be back next year anyway. :)
10: Essentially dead. Other than N0KE in CO, only bagged a few
    Gulf Coast stations from STX to SFL. Friday evening I heard
    several beacons from the midwest so I was hoping the E-skip
    would fire up again during FD, but no such luck.
15: Saturday afternoon, as empty as I have ever heard it during FD.
    Worked a few stations out west so *some* propagation was there, 
    but seems few people were wasting time there. Sunday mid-morning
    things got back to normal with plenty signals from the northeast 
    and midwest; we made about 350 Qs before closing time.

20/40/80 were about par for the course. Our QSO totals on 40 were 
way up due to working it during Sat. afternoon instead of 15 and 10.
QRN levels on 80 were a little lower than they sometimes are.

-- Ray  WQ5L  rocker at datasync.com