Topband: Surprising condx

[VE6WZ_Steve]

Last night 30 EU made it into the 160m log in spite of what looked like poor numbers.
Although some signals were exceptional, most were fairly muted and generally it was not a strong opening.  There were numerous callers that I could not quite pull out of the noise.  At first I thought it was just a northern EU opening, but southern EU was also making it through. The QSB was long and slow…..and deep, such that at any one time it would seem that the band was dead, but I could watch on my waterfall as EU traces would gradually emerge and fade. The path remained open from 2250z till 0700z.  At 0630 JA started calling that made RX difficult switching directions between EU and JA.

The solar wind was above 400 km/s and the AU activity was quite elevated, but the trans-polar path remained open from my QTH.  Normally the polar path will be shut down with a solar windspeed about 350 km/s.  It almost seems as though the path was shooting under the AU ring into the polar doughnut?  There have been a number of occasions when the solar wind has been lower, and the AU activity less, and yet the EU path is closed for me, but open for the more southern locations.  This makes me think that these geographically spotty openings might be related to the relative position of the AU ring/activity?  Surely not likely anything that we could predict, but another reason why the band is unpredictable.

de steve ve6wz.