Topband: ARRL 160M Contest - what happended to the propagation? (or about the lack of propagation at VK2)

[Tomas Magyla]

This year decided to do a little bit more serious effort than just hooking a
dipole in the bush. Found a place 3+ hrs to the south of Sydney which looked
liked in the middle of nowhere - empty fields & bush going to horizon,
gravel roads easy for a 4AWD car, and most importantly no people and
industrial QRNs around. Location height 1365m ASL. Was tempted to work QRP
but decided to go in 100W category to enjoy the pileups, SO (or should this
be called a MUlti-multi considering kangaroos helping me to attach PVC rope
to the dipole to make it stronger for the sort of winds you get at such
location?).
As usual, was a bit late and arrived to the place just half an hour before
the sunset local time on Saturday. The upper insulator of the sloper was
about 40m AGL (+1365 ASL) - I have never operated from such a high and open
location on 160m (for exception of the 160M WW CW 2005 from Mt. Pendelli in
SV1 land
http://www.qrz.lt/foto/main.php?g2_view=core:ShowItem&g2_itemId=3908 ).
Switched on IC-7000 - and literrary nothing heard, just VK3EGN who was
flying a kite antenna 120m high (if I copied correctly) - huge signal at my
place. Unfortunately just a few traces of W4 at about the noise floor which
was quite shocking (it is summer time here in VK) . Decided that a beverage
to US would not hurt. Fiddling in the bush when its dark is not the best
idea in VK, especially knowing that VK is at the top of the most dangerous
snakes and spiders chart.. Anyway got a short beverage connected which
helped a little bit. About 2hrs after the sunset K9DX and W0SD were coming
at about 579 here, however to my big surprise they could not copy my
callsign, just a half of it (VK2C??). The first QSO (and the last ) was with
KH6LC - under normal condx used to work him with QRP without any problems.
Kept listening for a little while but there were no improvement to signals
from US. A few more stations appeared on the band that were reasonably loud
- JA3, RA0, HS, DU, but not W/K..
I had to escape the place when a vehicle turned up with a kilowatts of
lights scanning a bush around my place. Why and who? I haven't got a clue.
Could have been kangaroo hunters, or maybe someone escaped from the nearby
prison, or maybe aliens trying to kidnap a ham as they did not have that
sort of sample in their collection.
Cu next year
73 de VK2CCC

a few photos (sorry no aliens there) :
http://www.qrz.lt/foto/main.php?g2_view=core:ShowItem&g2_itemId=438762