Topband: Great west coast cndx

[Dr .Wolf Ostwald]

hello reflectees !
I hope that Earl is rite with the " end of the doldrums" on 160. From EU it was kinda easy yesterday to work KH6AT and the so called "first layer west coasters". W6XX and W6RJ with very nice sigs and then Earl/K6SE edging them by about an S-unit in EU. A lot of others were detectable but they mixed into each other and became a watery blur on frequency, which is too bad,of course the band was very busy and noisy on such an occasion, understandably. I do have the impression that many stations out west would just need one or two more dbs on the ERP side and become readable in EU more often.A kind of "threshold" is clearly existing in this case ! Of course two dbs is a lot on 160, but can be achieved with a better TX antenna.I went that way when the last solar minimum faded and it became quite clear that more gain was an essential ingredient now. I added more elements and put down more radials.Homebrew filters and preamps being already in place. Once someone starts to work on the hardware for topband seriously , the term "working DX" gets a much clearer meaning. Now what do we wait for ?
73 es gud DX everybody   de wolf - df2py-