Topband: Condition to USA from vk3 and to Europe

[Ron vk3io]

Hello USA topbanders, for those who have not realised it, conditions are so good lately that it is worth listening up in the ssb section.

It seems top band has finaly come good. Yesterday there were some really strong signal coming in, so good I tried ssb with W3GH and during our chat he peaked at S9+30dB.

Later K9DX called in, for our first ssb top band qso, he also peaked at S9+20dB. This time it was not a quick peak, but a solid opening that made its way across to Texas, maybe further west but I could not stay up too late.

I had ssb qso's with W3GH, N3MZL, K9DX, KB4XK, K5BG, WA8LXJ and W5IZ who also was S9+10dB.

Signals were great from 1047utc to 1221utc. I usually call for USA on ssb  on 1845kHz or 1855kHz, when signals are strong on cw, as the cw segment gets pretty crowded.

We (and the ZL's)  cop really bad packet qrm on 1818 and  1816kHz  from the GPS data service, so a fair chunk of the cw segment is not usuable down here. 

Today 1230 to 1330utc the band also sounds good, but I missed any east coast activity, if there was any earlier, as I did work tonight.

Will probably have a look each night for the next two weeks, as I have some holidays coming up.

There was also a great opening to europe during the wpx ssb contest, with many station called who were S9+10dB at just before my sun rise at 2030utc.

Unfortunately I only had one qso on ssb, obviously due to the european contest qrm at there end.

When ssb was not producing results, I could not resit a couple of good cw qso's with S50U who was 589 and SP6IHE who was 559.

I still can hear many european stations calling 3B9C at about my sunrise, so the path is still working, which is most unusual, although they are generally much weaker.

But one in every approximately five days seem to still produce good workable signals providing the qrn is not bad.

Yesterday I made a stratchy qso with 5B4GM right on my sun rise time.

So will keep looking also at this time.   

Catch you all on ssb one day in the future, till the next time, 73's.

Ron vk3io