Topband: cqww cw from Ark

[Dan Edward Dba East edwards]

i was pleased to be invited to K5GO's north west Arkansas DX contest country club last weekend, and, at the last minute, was 'released' from entertaining the in-laws. check out
K5GO.com sometime......we were multi-multi.
 
As the 160m op I was impressed with Stan's excellent antennas and QTH. my rig was
an Omni 7 and Ameritron AL 1500. both seemed to play just fine, even though it was
my first time with a Ten Tec. very easy to get settled in. Tx ant a 90' shunt fed tower with
a big 6 el 20 on top. many many radials. a wire 1/4 wave reflector to the SW  (to beam
to NE) was available
but could be 'floated' for omni tx. Rx 2 nice long single wire beverage fed from 
either end, hitting the 4 major compass quadrants. i listened on the tx ant periodically,
of course, just to see if i was missing anything..
 
while the band was, at least, open, it didnt seem conditions were all that good back here.
after catching several amazing over the pole openings in the last 10 days or so, there
was no such luck last weekend. even most eastern europeans were not readable or 
workable, and very little came thru at sunrise, except a few JA's..i heard nothing from
northern Eu at sunrise either....I did notice the K index popped up to 2 for a few hours..
 
I spent about and equal amount of time S & P'ing and  CQ'ing. CQ'ing was generally a
waste of time, even with patience. chasing down cluster and skimmer spots was generally
fruitless. while several western europeans were easily worked, central europe was 
another matter. I thought something was wrong, so Stan himself gave it a go for a bit,
and concluded condx were just not that good.
 
bottom line, about 200 qso's (mostly domestic zero pointers and every VE i could find)
52 countries, 18 zones. well off results from the same station in recent years....hope I
dont get 'fired'......
 
Thanks to Stan for tolerating me for most of the weekend.
 
73, W5XZ, Dan, Longview Texas.