Topband: Where is everyone?

[Bob K6UJ]

I hope tonights Pre-Stew provides some good participation.
I am experimenting with a receiving BOG and so far havent heard very 
much on 160.
I cant tell if the BOG is not doing very well or just lack of sigs. I 
know the condx arent
optimum yet which is most of the problem (I hope)  Hopefully tonight
will tell the tale.................

Bob
K6UJ

On 10/22/16 5:09 AM, Tim Shoppa wrote:
> Some of us are looking at the contest calendar for next 7 consecutive
> weekends (CQWWSSB; ARRLSSCW; WAERTTY; ARRLSSSSB; CQWWCW; ARRL160M; ARRL10M)
> and spending some quality time with our families in advance! I will be on
> full-bore for the Pre-Stew but that's only one night so no big deal.
>
> I haven't been at home during the day, but conditions seem to have been
> surprisingly good on the high bands, and locals that are home during the
> day are reporting working exotic locations all around the world on 12M.
>
> I thought 40M and 80M were really sucky in WAG last weekend - weak signals
> and flutter on everything from Germany yet all the southern Europeans were
> pounding in loud and clear. That same weekend 20M was dang good.
>
> I did have a few nights of spectacularly good 160M conditions to EU in
> September. Sept 15 I worked a bunch of loud Europeans at my local midnight
> and Sept 16 was superb to Scandinavia at my sunset.
>
> Tim N3QE
>
> On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 2:03 AM, Donald Chester <k4kyv at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Here it is Friday  night, with relatively little QRN, but only a couple of
>> signals are audible across the entire 160m band.  80/75m has a few more
>> signals than that, but it's sparsely occupied as well.  Usually by this
>> late in the season one will hear plenty of activity in the evening,
>> especially on weekends.  I have noticed this dearth of activity for several
>> weeks now; it's as if this year's radio season hasn't got off the ground
>> yet, despite the fact that we are almost midway through autumn and the
>> summer QRN has substantially subsided.
>>
>> Is this a trend, and is this becoming the new normal?  They keep telling
>> us we now have a record number of hams in the FCC data base, over 700,000.
>> Those hams certainly aren't on the air, at least not on 160, 80 or 40m.  I
>> can  remember not that many years ago when at this stage in the season on a
>> quiet weekend night one had to scout around to find a clear spot to call
>> CQ.  So far this year, the bands have all had vast swathes of unused
>> frequencies, but the signals that are heard appear to be at normal
>> strength, so the  bands apparently aren't dead.
>>
>> Don k4kyv
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