TopBand: CQWW - Rounds 2 & 3

[Bill Hohnstein]

.
  Early Sunday (UTC) was much like Saturday, only with a reasonable
static level.  Again, east and northern Europe showed the greater
enhancement to their signal levels.  I'm not sure if the rest of
Europe was better or it was simply my lower static level making my
copy of them better then.  It was nice copying calls the first time...
  Similar locations/stations were worked like the night before.
Around 0200 I had a hard time finding new calls.  By 0300 it was
obvious that the propagation music had died.  And the hoped for EU
sunrise peak never occured other than some weak extreme northern
Europeans (OH3LYG, OH2HE).  The ON4UN machine was also weakly copied
but his sunrise "run" quickly fizzled...
  Sunday local sunrise saw reduced conditions and my suffering the
effects of not getting motivated to go outside to change the
direction of my transmit array...
  Tonight (Round 3) had the following early signals heard:  CT3/OH1MA
(2217Z), EA8ZS (2323 - his strongest signal then), GW7J (2230),
OH2HE (2259), sunset 2301z, and RZ3QU (2315).
  I was surprised to hear RZ9AZA calling CQ at 2320--he was too
strong!  He faded up at least 20 dB over the noise and I thought,
"This should be easy."  I called but he didn't come back.  Again I
called--nothing.  He faded down for the first time to the noise
level--"I'll just wait until he peaks again."  He CQed again and
was still weak--I called anyway.  He came back!  We exchanged reports
and he was gone.  I don't think that he faded out, but I didn't hear
any more CQs or callers...
  I went back to searching for new stations but only could hear those
already worked (including UA4PWW, OM5ZW, etc.).

  That was fun!  Let's do this again next weekend!

73,  Bill     K0HA


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