[RTTY] Spotlight propagation

[Don Hill AA5AU]

Indeed, propagation was strange - poor but strange.  Stateside on 15 meters acted very much like what I'm used to ten meters being
like during this part of the cycle.  Every stateside contact on 15 up until late Sunday (when I worked some west coast beaming west)
was made on a backscatter path with the beam between 120-150 degrees SE.  I worked 21 states/provinces (34 USA/4 VE stations) all on
a scatter path to the SE - the best being VE1OP - that was a cool contact Scott.  Normally when condx are like this, my scatter path
is NW on 15 meters.  I beam NW and work stations on the east coast and midwest.  The only US station that was strong on the scatter
path this weekend was Earl, N5ZM, in AR.

Even though I was working South America and the Caribbean on a straight path, I had to beam to 60 degrees (NE) to work ZF2DF on 15
Sunday.  ZF is south of here (unlike other Caribbean QTH's like J6, KP4, KP2, etc which are 120 degrees).  So that was another
strange scatter path.

One of the strangest things I've ever seen in all my RTTY contesting years happened on Sunday and it was also on 15 meters.  For the
first time all weekend I started hearing EU on 15 meters Sunday morning.  I worked 4 EA stations and CU3AA and that was it for EU on
15.  Then at 1715Z, with the beam to South America, I came across 4O3A calling CQ over and over.  I was only hearing them with the
beam at 150 degrees (straight path is 45 degrees).  I swung the beam back and forth and they peaked at 150 degrees with about 80%
print.  I called for ten minutes but they never heard me so I went to look for something else and never heard them again.  I figure
they were running serious power and antennas, but I was really hoping to make the contact.  It would have ranked right up there with
working JA's on 10 meters longpath while running EU at the same time during the 2000 BARTG RTTY contest.

That year, Ron K5DJ, and I were doing a multi-multi from W5KFT using my callsign.  It was Saturday morning and Ron was on 15 running
EU and I was on 10 running EU when I kept seeing JA callsigns in the alphabet soup on my screen.  I said to Ron "Hey, I think I'm
hearing JA.  How can that be possible?".  He says "Oh yeah, just turn the top antenna longpath to JA."  So I did and sure enough
there they were.  I guess you can do that when you have a monobander at 150'.  Sunday morning they were there again.  It is
something I'll never forget.

What I'm curious about is where others had to turn their beam to in order to work me on 15 this weekend?  I'm guessing 120
degrees???

73, Don AA5AU
http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.rttycontesting.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Bill Turner
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 5:39 AM
To: rtty at contesting.com; cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [RTTY] Spotlight propagation

In looking through my WW log for the last weekend, I found some interesting propagation. For example:

Not a single G or DL and only one F.
Several Scandanavian stations.
One ZS on 40 meters (not bad from USA west coast)!
112 JA including two on 80m

Not sure what to make of that, but zero England or Germany in 766 QSOs is really strange.

Bill W6WRT
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