Topband: Lightning QRN season?

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

The persistence of easily more than half a year of loud QRN in the evenings
on 160, perhaps 3/4 of the year, has generated the *expectation* that no
one is on.  The expectation of activity is what generates activity.  The
band is clearly open to some degree at various times any night, even in
July.  A lot of people will get on for the summer Stew Perry, and various
summer contests will get contestants on 160 for multipliers.  There is an
expectation of activity at certain times known to many contestants.  The
summer 160 starved can get on 160 for the NCCC Thursday night tests, but
will have to take the time to know when the participants come down to 160
for a few minutes of a very short contest.

An unexpectedly quiet summer night on 160 with no expectation of activity,
will be just that -- a quiet night.

If anything, the length of QRN season has become longer over the decades,
sometimes pushing bad nights into December and January.  Global warming?

It's antenna building and fixing time.

73, Guy.

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Richard Jaeger <k4iqj at mindspring.com>wrote:

> Mike,
>
> The band has been open frequently in the morning to VK/ZL.
> Several of us are on almost every morning checking propagation with VK3ZL
> and others.
> The band is open a lot, but activity is low.
>
> I checked the log and have made contact with VK3ZL 29 days since the
> beginning of May
> with signals ranging from 339 to 579 (peaked at 569 this AM).  Dan, W5XZ,
> may have made more qsos.
> Many other days signals have been present but unreadable in the noise.
>
> On the other hand, evening propagation to Europe has been the poorest I
> remember.
> Only a few contacts (G3JMJ & IV3PRK).
> I was traveling and missed most of the contests, so don't know about
> activity then.
>
> Here is the (not very long) list of dx from my log from the beginning of
> May.
>
> VK3ZL
> VK4MA
> PJ6/K4UEE
> T46C
> KG4RX
> KH6AT
> KH6ZM
> KV4FZ
> G3JMJ
> IV3PRK
> ZL3IX
>
> I have also heard VK3IO, OA4TT, and HK.
>
> Dick, K4IQJ ..
>
>
> _________________
> Topband Reflector
>