Topband: 3B9C Topband team report Mar 29/30

[3B9C]

    At our local sunset on Mar 29 N7UA in Washington was worked for our
second west coast sunset QSO.  N7UA's signal crept up out of the noise about
10 minutes before sunset.  This QSO was recorded.

    About 10 minutes later we believe W2VJN was heard but we were unable to
confirm the call or begin the exchange of RST.  Unfortunately, after a
couple of minutes in trying to clarify the call, some local machine noise
(e.g., bar blender, hairdryer, street lamps firing up, etc) started up for a
couple of minutes and raised the noise floor by a few dB.  When it
disappeared, the station calling us was no longer audible.

    A few other isolated code characters were heard at random times around
sunset.

    This sunset, and the previous sunrise, were the first times that we felt
our receive cability was not limited by static but rather by local ambient
QRN (weak electrical noises).  In fact, it is the first occasion where we
even noticed that we have some man-made noise here!  Thunderstorm QRN has
been so prevalent at various levels of intensity over the past 10 days that
the local stuff was masked.

    The USA opening at USA sunset was disappointing.  We did not experience
the 'flip-of-a-switch' effect and all signals were very, very weak (apart
from W8JI).  Mike G3SED worked essentially all of this opening (plus the
preceding Europe and Asia openings, including some SSB QSOs with Europe).
The first USA signals were logged shortly after 2315z but the band closed
again at 0048 for an hour.  There was then a very brief opening in the 10
minutes remaining before our sunrise.  Mike heard 4-5 extremely weak signals
and worked four stations.  Static levels reverted to "bad".  There was no
opportunity to try either of our experiments.  As Mike put it, "I CQ'd my
heart out for the last two hours and only had 4 QSOs total."  The label on
the F1 key (with the CQ message) has worn off entirely now...

    Bye for now...

-- 3B9C Topband Team: (Mike G3SED, Don G4XTT, Eric K3NA)