Topband: Better low band conditions?

[John Kaufmann]

I think the perspective from the more northerly latitudes is quite different than further south.  In W1 land we're more adversely affected by absorption associated with high auroral activity.  I monitor the NOAA Web site http://www.sel.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html quite a bit.  When the auroral ovals start extending into the Northern U.S., we suffer a bigger propagation hit than people further south.  I've seen this happen repeatedly over the last two or three seasons, especially during the contest weekends on 160.  

Not surprisingly the polar paths are the ones that take the biggest hit during high sunspot years.  JA's have been pretty rare here the last few seasons.  I remember in 1987, during the sunspot low from two cycles ago, the band opened to JA on an almost daily basis during mid-winter of that year. On the good days, the JA QRM in the old JA window sounded like 20 meters, with stations stacked up every couple hundred Hz from 1907 to 1912 kHz.  The sunspot minimum of the 1990's was not as good, however, in this respect.

I spend a lot of time on 80m, too.  The polar path to JA really suffers during high sunspots.  In fact the large majority of JA's there are worked on the SW skew path around the sunspot peaks.  Around the troughs, however, the direct path predominates.  

Also, as I've mentioned a number of times, I monitor a number of lowband beacons.  Over two decades I've found the same beacons are louder, more consistently, during low sunspot years.  

73, John W1FV