Topband: Noon time condx

[Carl K9LA]

  N0FP wrote

. . . snip . . .

>This reminds me of a story told to me by my friend Al K0AD about Chicago "back in the 'olden' days." Everybody used 160M mobile to stay in touch.
>
I grew up in Hammond (northwest Indiana) and the 160m mobile operations 
that Ford referred to had a lot to do with the daily Calumet Area 
Emergency Net on 1805KHz (if I remember correctly). In fact the CAEN was 
my first exposure to Amateur Radio on my NC-60 during my SWLing days 
before I received my Novice license in 1961. Al K0AD (then K9DHN) lived 
a couple miles away from me, and I remember riding with him on several 
160m fox hunts. Enough reminiscing.

As for propagation during the day on 160m, I would expect two decent 
stations (KWs and noise levels of a rural setting) to be able to work 
each other out to 1500km or so - and that depends on the day-to-day 
variation of the ionosphere (specifically the D region). Being near 
solar minimum helps, as that minimizes absorption due to D region 
ionization from hard x-ray wavelengths. But we're still limited by the 
second source of daytime D region ionization - that from a hydrogen 
spectral line at 121.5nm.

This year seemed to have the most daytime CQers that I can recall in 
many years. I agree with Ford that we won't work any DX, but there's 
still a lot of continental stuff to work.

Carl K9LA