Topband: Surprises

[Larry Molitor]

For the last week or so EU and AF has been copied here at my sunset. Nothing unusual about that. Mostly they can't hear me as that's the noisiest part of the night for them. Mostly, I hear the big guns and have worked them all so I usually just SWL waiting for somebody new to pop up.

Last night I saw TF3CW spotted a few minutes after my sundown.

Surprise #1: I could hear him fine
Surprise #2: No one was calling him
Surprise #3: He could hear me
Surprise #4: I could not remember the last time I worked a TF station so checked the spreadsheet, and discovered this was a new 160 entity for me

Nothing else interesting on the band so I went away. Just prior to turning in for the night I checked the band again. 9L0W was heard. I've heard him at his sunrise before but have not been able to break through the huge pile of east coast and midwest stations calling.

Surprise #5 He heard me call!!

Now I knew this was a new one so I drug out the spread sheet again to check it off. I noticed that there were a lot of check marks added since the last time I updated the spreadsheet 6 years ago, so I decided to take a few mintutes and count up the total 160 entities worked.

Surprise #6 There were 201 entities checked off!

I never thought I'd live long enough to break the 200 mark without cheating and moving to the east coast. Given that I had no operational 160 station during the best part of the last two cycle minimums and that for most of the last 50 years I've lived in places where I couldn't actually hear much on topband, I never for a moment thought I'd be here today.

It's a good thing I'm too old and tired to get excited about this sort of thing, otherwise I'd probably start "chasing" stuff again. I discovered it's lot more fun to work this stuff if you don't really care much if you do or not.....

73, Larry

Larry - W7IUV
DN07dg - central WA
http://w7iuv.com