Topband: Boring Report - December

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

I find it very interesting to watch the reverse beacon network come up
with Skimmer spots.

  http://www.reversebeacon.net/dxsd1/?f=3

It is interesting in that real signal reports are involved,
signal-to-noise in the skimmer RX to be specific and shows the margins
available.

A "CQ CQ DE K2AV K2AV" is enough to invoke it.  Last night was
interesting because of the half dozen or so USA skimmers that will
usually report my signal, only the west coast and EI6IZ, S50ARX were
spotting me at some points.  The rest of USA were buried by the
amazing worst-of-summer-grade-nasty QRN from what ever that is off
Florida coasts and did not report my signal.

Even so, IV3PRK, G3ROO and others were busy through it, making long
strings of QSO's.  The historical data with spots does not exist for
several years ago, but continues to show DX breakthroughs, if one is
paying attention.  For instance, using:

   http://www.reversebeacon.net/analysis/

...pick Jan 7 for date, North America, K3LR for beacon staton, and
search for IV3PRK.  You will see that his signal was well out of the
noise for a long time on the graph and shows that he was on the band
for over three hours, roughly 02Z to 05Z, even on a noise with awful
mid-summer QRN levels.

I think in the past we were USED to having to scan for hours, and so
put in the time to find DX coming up.  The ongoing reliance on manual
spots is probably contributing to decline, as some that I know have
stated that they have quit spotting.  The skimmer spots, frankly, are
better, more timely, don't screw up call signs or mis-post
frequencies. They also show propagation moving across the continents
with the signal to noise data.

I AM wondering what is responsible for so many summer-grade QRN storms
off-shore this season.

73, Guy.