Topband: Stew operating times?

[Tim Shoppa]

Last year I made a serious full-time effort from W3LPL, maybe the only
full-time effort I'll ever make in TBDC.

I looked at local sunrise/sunset times and found out that there is 14.5
hours of darkness but only 14 hours of op time.

I started about 10 minutes after my sunset and ran till about 10 minutes
after my sunrise. I was hoping to maybe catch a JA.

I took a half hour break from 0832Z to 0905Z.

My slowest half hour was 0730Z to 0800Z, where I worked only 6, but two of
them were Europeans after their sunrise (and I did not work a lot of
Europeans overall!!!)

Since scoring is weighted by distance... I was called by KH6's and VK's
around their sunset and I would not want to miss those.

If I were to do a 14-hour over again... I might start before sunset and
take two half-hour breaks after EU sunrise, and stay on longer after
sunrise to catch locals as they wake up and maybe a chance at JA.

Tim N3QE

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 12:22 PM, K4OWR <k2owr at comcast.net> wrote:

> :::: What operating times are recommended?
> Since it's 1500-1500, and I need to pick 14 hours, I'm guessing about 6PM
> Sat to 8AM Sun ??? In order to maximize propogation?
> BILL K4OWR
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