Topband: Re Boring report..

[robert briggs]

To Jim and all,Pleased I am hearing a bit of traffic 
again....Unfortunately it gets a bit late at night for me..Bed time 
usually 1300z or 11pm my time...Tree has been good all this week and I 
have been having regular contacts with Bob W7LR....I still keep my daily 
sked with Tom W8JI now going for 10 years...We don't often miss the 
contact except for high qrn..Even though the band sounds in the doldrums 
it is supporting workable Dx from the American North and South 
continents..Once daylight saving time starts I won't be able to stay 
around for West Coast DX...European Dx at my sunrise dominates my summer 
operation...BTW my final tally of EU stations worked last season from 
Nov to the end of March was 667 contacts, among these a few new 
countries...For some reason the average EU signals are more consistent  
and stronger  around my sunrise than the average  from the  US etc  in 
my evenings....Perhaps this perception comes from sig to noise near 
sunrise compared to the general band noise after sunset...Interesting 
observation though...I do believe though, that  you have to be on 160 
regularly all the time  to really get that "feel" and intuition of how 
the band is performing...I find the band conductive more often than 
not..It is only local QRN that seems to keep people off most of the 
time...I generally suffer S1 to S3 noise during the winter and apart 
from storm static propagated in from VK2/4/5/8 even summer conditions 
are tolerable most of the time..

I must note over the past two months my best signal strength readings 
have been off the little transmitting vertical...I generally use the 90 
foot inverted V for reception but recently signals have been up to 2 S 
units down compared to the vertical...I have no other receive 
antennas....Not sure why this is happening...Both antennas are fully 
resonant and matched properly....Maybe we have lots of low angle stuff 
arriving....

Ah well, I hope that things soon improve and more stations start looking 
around...Propagation is there most of the time just waiting for us to 
take full advantage...

Good Dxing to all......73..Bob VK3ZL...