Topband: KH8Q and band condx

[Michael Tope]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry Molitor" <w7iuv at yahoo.com>
To: <topband at contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2006 7:12 AM
Subject: Topband: KH8Q and band condx


> This morning the nearly 40 year quest to put KH8 in the topband log ended. 
> You would think it would be easy from the west coast, but every previous 
> operation from KH8 has been during a period when my 160 antenna was down 
> or the operation was unable to produce enough signal for me to hear.
>
> They were 559 this morning for the most part with lots of QSB. They seemed 
> to have trouble hearing most of the callers and the callers had trouble 
> hearing them.
>

Does anyone know if the KH8 team changed their antenna
system. Prior to this morning I understand they'd had very
little success working any US stations. This morning they
were actually quite readable on QSB peaks at my urban
QTH, but I wasn't impressed that overall band conditions
were all that good (the JA's calling them were for the most
part barely audible and I couldn't hear KH0PR, who was
just down the band, at all). Thus, I thought maybe their
sudden success might be due to an antenna change rather
than exceptional band conditions. Couldn't get them to hear
me, but hearing them solid for the 1st time was at least
encouraging.

73, Mike W4EF....................................