Topband: Solar Activity & Topband

[Shoppa, Tim]

> Well, maybe they have been good at your QTH.  Here, the conditions to
> Europe have been the worst in recent memory.  Just fleeting peeps of Europe
> barely working through. Only honestly R5 signals were from Portugal.  One G
> was R4, and the rest, what few of them there were, were R3.  73, Guy (Apex,
> NC)

I'm far from a propagation expert but my observation: 160 inside NA was working real good in the NAQCC QRP 160M sprint and last night too. (Side note on the NAQCC 160: I had never thought of 160 as a QRP band before but the best ops really shone through that night.)

HK0NA has been coming in just fine here on the east coast on 160M many evenings the past week. A neighbor told me he got Pitcairn on 160M (I missed them somehow)

None of the above require polar paths.

But last night the only euro DX I worked was southern Europe (like Guy mentioned), and I only barely heard the peeps of the northern euro powerhouse stations, stations that when conditions are good I could probably receive just fine using just a few feet of wire hanging out the back of the radio or maybe just my tooth fillings Gilligan-style.

My guess (ready to stand corrected, and learn as a result!): Solar activity has disrupted the 160M polar paths but not so much others.

Tim N3QE