TopBand: A magical night on 160

[Larry Tyree]

Move over December 28th (date of last year's best opening)...

December 9th may was maybe not as good of an opening, but an interesting
one.  This was a northern latitude event.  The closer people were to
the north pole - the louder they were. 

However, there were exceptions.  This was the first time I ever heard
4X4NJ - for about 3 minutes at his sunrise.  ZS4TX was in pretty good
around 0310.  EM1KA was in for maybe an hour starting at around 0500Z
and R0/UR8LV was having a lot of fun from 0445 until at around 0600.
I heard EY0ZA when he worked UR8LV, but couldn't get his attention.
That was at 0525Z.

I guess I heard WAC in the span of an hour.  The reason for this was
a combination of good conditions and the power lines dried out enough
to make the band much more quiet than it has been for a couple of weeks.

It was also a long opening.  First European was at 0124 with OZ7C
and the last was G0OLE at 07:59.  From 07:40 to 08:00 there was
a decent opening to the UK.

Could not raise HB9ATA who was pretty weak (after his sunrise?).  
Never heard CT1BOH - but did hear EA4KD although he ignored N7JW
and myself calling him.  

Some stations were on 1830 exactly.  G3FPQ was zero beat with the 
AM broadcast birdies for about an hour.  GW3JXN was there later
and maybe that is why I didn't hear CT1BOH.  All it takes is 200
hertz to fix it.

New ones consisted of ES1QD and ES1RA (0359 and 0608Z).  Hey, these
guys are not far from Finland.  Also, RK3QA at 0548.  I think several
other UA3 stations were calling, but didn't surf the QSB well enough
to make it.  These were the only mainland Europeans I worked (out of 
18 QSOs).  SM4HCM and I tried SSB and had a great QSO at 0624.  

K6AAW reported making 10 European QSOs.  Also, AI7B has a score
around 220K in the AARL 160 - great job Bob!  The K7RAT ARRL 160
score was about 75K - a family weekend type of effort.  

It must be December.  

73 Tree N6TR/7
tree@contesting.com
as seen on http://www.contesting.com/km9p/n6tr/

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