Topband: Strange Condx

[Charlie Cunningham]

Hi, Herb!

Well, it's easy to forget that receiving conditions can be quite different
at different ends of the path! An hour before  your sunset, it had been dark
for a while western and central Europe and the noise level on 160 can often
pick up as darkness settles in on the eastern end of the daylight path.
Also, it's worth keeping in mind that most of Western Europe is at
considerably higher latitude than we are and may be more subject to
auroral-related disturbance and noise! 

A good example showed up last night. I was sitting here and watching DX
Summit on my computer in between work tasks. I especially like to watch 30m
spots. A W7 remarked about a Chinese BA7 station "bad ears" and the Chinese
op, apparently was watching, and posted the W7's call and said "Sorry - GP
antenna and S6 noise level". So we don't always know what the guy a world
away is up against, and it's worth remembering, too, if we post critical
remarks on the DX clusters, the other op may be watching also and be
offended or suffer some "hurt feelings"

Regards,
Charlie, K4OTV

-----Original Message-----
From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Herb
Krumich
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2012 6:47 PM
To: topband at contesting.com
Subject: Topband: Strange Condx

Friday late afternoon around 4 pm (EST), I was listening to 160 and was
hearing many signals from Europe and Russia. Some were quite loud. 
I probably called at least a dozen different stations with no luck. My
transmit antenna is an inverted L which is about 85 feet vertical. I even
went outside to make sure the horizontal leg was not disturbed due to wind. 
I operate EME on 144 mhz and have had times where signals would only go one
way. Was this the case ? Or could it have been storms which would have
produced high levels of noise on their receive end ?
After a radio club dinner, I went back to 160 and was able to work two
stations in Europe with single calls from me.
I'm going to try the SP contest next weekend for some fun Isn't this the
greatest hobby ever ?
Herb K2LNS
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