[CQ-Contest] Propagation Sucked, especially on Sunday

[Hank Greeb]

Folks seem to be complaining that there were no stations to work on Sunday.

However, propagation "sucked" on both daze, and were worse on Sunday 
than on Saturday.

I had a reasonable time working stations S&P with my 4.99999 watts to a 
mediocre antenna on 20, 40, and harder time on 80 but reasonable 
considering the thunderboomers in the midwest on Saturday evening.    I 
didn't even try "runing" with my measly station.

On Sunday, things were really rotten.  The only saving grace was that a 
few hardy souls opened up 15 meters for a couple hours or more on Sunday 
afternoon, and I worked several new multipliers.

20 and 40 were full of mainly a few of the same LOUD stations who I 
worked before.  On 40 I was heard a few times by the RBN but on 80 only 
once.  QRN from thunderstorms was down, so I attributed the lack of 
being heard to either long skip and absorption on these bands, or being 
overrun by folks I couldn't hear because of the skip zone on both these 
bands..  On Saturday afternoon until dark it was NVIS on 40 meters,  But 
never on 80, at least when I got there.

So, maybe it was poor propagation which caused the problem.

When I'm out in a Park for Parks on the Air or the Michigan State Parks 
on the Air, I can russle up 30 Q's per hour or more and have many, many 
RBN reports, EXCEPT with absorption is high.  Of course, I'm the "magnet 
station" and there's little or no QRM.

72/73 de n8xx Hg
QRP >99.44% of the time


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