Topband: Conditions this weekend

[Tree]

On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 05:48:57PM -0600, Bill Hohnstein  K?HA wrote:

> > "I'd like to hear some other opinions of 160M band conditions during the
> > CQ WW CW contest.  I was not impressed here."

I was hiding on 80 meters - playing with my new 4 square and conditions on Friday
were very good to Europe - and extremely poor on Saturday.

> I'll let others rate this significance of this, but Friday
> night had a very good Es opening on 6M to both the east and the west from 
> here.  On Saturday, the geomagnetic environment was much worse and there 
> was no Es opening...

Saturday evening was sooo bad, I was wondering if there was an aurora event
going on or not.  I checked out six meters to find it full of signals from 
southern California.  

This connects with a piece of data I heard from someone else (was it KL7RA) 
who says that sometimes sporadic E takes over on the low bands and everything
is coming in at a high angle.  This felt like what was happening on Saturday
night as the east coast stations were all puny weak - AND my 4 square had no
directivity.  W7EW also reported his beverages didn't seem directive during
this time.

> I was making a limited all band effort with preference to the lowest productive
> band at night.  On Saturday night 160M conditions were to the point where much
> of an effort didn't seem warranted...

Or on 80 either.  It wasn't until the band opened to Japan that things started
cooking.  Between 00Z and 0500Z, it was all I could do to work a VE an hour.  The
best signals were from Africa, but still very weak compared to Friday.  However, 
the JA signals were just as loud as they were the previous night.

73 Tree N6TR / K7RAT