Topband: Better low band conditions?,

[Roger Parsons]

I have no doubt that conditions here have been
significantly better this season than during the
previous 3 or 4 years. They are still substantially
worse than they were when I first moved here in
1997/8. (That season I worked over 120 DXCC with a 40'
high inverted L in a tree with a few short radials,
and no separate RX antennas. I could not conceivably
have done that this year with a much, much better TX
antenna and lots of good RX antennas.)

I sometimes wonder why most accept that KL7, VY1, JW
etc are very difficult paths except in solar minimum
conditions, yet seem to expect that there should be no
difference in propagation between (say) Ontario and
Florida. Canada, and to a somewhat lesser extent the
northern United States, are enormously affected by
geomagnetic absorption. So are the Scandinavian
countries. More southerly stations are hardly affected
at all, except in so far as the path to the wanted
station may pass through auroral regions. Note that I
am not refering to the short term situation where
conditions may favour any one area over another, but
the general trend. On the other side of the coin, more
southerly stations often have to contend with higher
levels of QRN.

In my 37 years of operation from G3RBP I can never
recall such a lengthy period of poor to abysmal
conditions as I have experienced here over the past
few years. Paradoxically, I was a lot further north
there geographically, and a lot further south
geomagnetically. (And I can also never recall the
temperature in England falling to -35C!)

73 Roger
VE3ZI/G3RBP

PS Apologies to Southern Hemisphere stations. Please
invert the above comments!




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