TopBand: ARRL 160M Contest

[Bill Hohnstein]

The Europeans that chose to just get on around their sunrise "missed
the contest."  The best opening was within 3 hours of local sunset
(before 0200z).  I heard some Europeans around sunset (2320z) on 
the second day (GM3POI, IK2DED; S58A, EA5BY, & DJ7AA with the following
hour).  LY2VAD had an good signal (559) around 0055z.  ZS5K was 579
at 0240 with few callers heard after that despite his good signal.
Not much polar path was heard after 0300z other than a weak ED1RCW
around 0500z.  He (at 0634) and OK1DQT at 0543 were the only new
Europeans worked late on the first night.  I3VHO had a good signal
but wasn't copying very many signals.  OT8U and DJ7AA were the
European beacons on the first day showing the conditions slowly got
worse during the evening.  Either they weren't as active on the second
day late, or conditions weren't good enough to permit copy of even
their signals...
The number of stateside stations active also appeared to be down.
The contest provided a good test of my new Beverages.  On weak signals
the difference between a single Beverage and my phased pair towards
Europe was changing barely hearing to copying.  Nulling via the MFJ-
1026 was nice, but I took advantage of it more to have the best of
both worlds during stateside runs:  using both a east and a west
Beverage at the same time.  Switching Beverages while transmitting
sometimes resulted in some wild sending.
Still the optimist, I'm about to put up my final Beverage for the
year:  One for European long path at 215 degrees.  It's about that
time of year...

73,  Bill     K0HA


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