TopBand: A35WA/P29VXX

[Don Barclay]

Well guys, it's 1120z, (midnight+20 local) and here I sit again glued to
the radio.  It's about time for the W1 peak, and I'm listening to 
A35WA calling cq s9+20 on 1824.0 with no takers.  P29VXX is also 
on, 1826.5 as usual, s9 (he peaks several hours later here).

Even though A35WA is in the Vava'u group in the north of Tonga, 
only 300 miles from me in Samoa, I must believe that he is workable 
in the U.S. if he's that strong with me.  Listen up tomorrow morning if 
you get a chance, I doubt that the ARRL test will do much damage 
to 160m cw dx'ing.  He's staying at the Hilltop Guest House, which 
has some trees around and is. of course, on top of a fairly nice-sized 
hill.  (I stayed there two weeks ago.)

If we have another one of those nights when you're hearing some 
station in the south Pacific but he can't hear you, you can check out

ftp://ftp.jcu.edu.au/JCUMetSat/sector-d.gif

for a possible reason.  No, it's not pictures of topless natives, only a
weather satellite image for the west-central Pacific, but it will give 
you a good idea how near the big thunderstorms are and some hint
of what his QRN level might be.  If you change the letter after sector,
you'll get a different area. ( Some areas aren't covered yet.)

Tonight the band sounds the best I've ever heard it, which probably
means it's in poor condition.  My band noise is s0, the occasional
QRN only reaches s6, and the East coast was loud at my sunset.
That's how it was 4 nights ago, when I could hear hundreds of 
stations and nobody was working the P29!  Go figure...

I just called cq and was answered by --3RR, I think.  I copied KE3R,
then KE3RR, then VE3RR, then VA3RR, then CE3RR, then 
ET3RR, then EA3RR......?????????????????  The band is funny,
alright, it drops dits, makes dahs out of two dits, two dits out of dahs..
well, he gave up.  If he had sent faster, I could have pieced it to-
gether a lot better.  If there's lots of QSB, and I don't copy you the
first 3 times you send your call, don't slow down.  I'm not deaf, you're
just giving the band a chance to drop your letters.  Faster is definitely
better in this case (I don't mean 60 wpm...)

Good luck with the A35 and P29.  If you work A35WA, qsl to 
DF5WA.  See some of you this weekend, SOABHP.





73 & DX,
Don,  KH8/N5OLS







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