Topband: Contest conditions

[Jim Garland]

I think some contest stations had directional receive antennas and omni
transmitting antennas. There were times when S9 stations couldn't hear me at
all, and I suspect they were just listening in a different direction. At
other times, I could work stations just marginally out of the noise. 

I noticed that on 80m some Chinese stations would be booming in, with a
pileup calling, but they'd never work anybody. (I never heard any of them on
Top Band.)That I attributed to likely high noise levels in Chinese cities.
Some of the big Russian contest stations were also blasting in but couldn't
hear any callers, including me. I suspect some them may have been running
"Russian Kilowatts."  By contrast, the big JA multi-multi contesters could
hear and work everything.

One problem I frequently encountered was DX stations sending CW way too
fast. When a station is just out of the noise with fast QSB, as many
frequently are, they're really hard to copy if they're going 45 wpm,
especially if they have a short, unusual call, like T5W. 
73,
Jim W8ZR

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of K6UJ
Bob
> Harmon
> Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2016 08:44 PM
> To: Gary at ka1j.com
> Cc: topband at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: Topband: Contest conditions
> 
> Gary,
> Thanks for the report.  I am a newbie on 160 and now I know I cant
> blame all my receive issues on my lame inverted L    :-)
> 
> Bob
> K6UJ
> 
> On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 7:30 PM, Gary Smith <Gary at ka1j.com> wrote:
> 
> > Weird condx here for the contest, I could hear plenty of DX but even
> > with a KW, they often couldn't hear me. Sometimes the Rx antenna was
> > less helpful to listen with and other times it was incredibly
> > effective like someone pulled the plug on all directions except the
> > one the DX was at.
> >
> > Wasn't the antennas, I still made great contacts with some faint DX
> > who I could barely hear, it was unusual conditions.
> > Think the uncertainty is one of the
> > reasons I love 160 as much as I do.
> >
> > 73,
> >
> > Gary
> > KA1J
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