Topband: Propagation.

[W7RH]

The not so Boring Report. Sorry Tree. Boring is actual a suburb of the 
greater Portland, Gresham area on US 26 on the way to Mt Hood and Bend 
Oregon. Know it well as the area was stomping ground in my youth. I'm 
now an old fart who has been in the desert for over 30 years.

Here is my Propagation perspective from the West:

Except for rare Greyline at sunset propagation it takes several hours 
for the F1 and F2 layers to settle. This early in the season out west 
and you stay up to midnight you might get lucky but usually hear 
nothing. The exception is those to far south and those to far north.

No propagation? 160m is always open somewhere. Sunrise here in the west 
has seen many openings to VK and ZL with Asiatic Russia thrown in. All 
summer there were good openings to South America, Central America  and 
occasional African.

While the Midwest guys are enjoying getting into EU, West of the Rockies 
only a few openings occur this early. Guys in the northern western tier 
states and Canada with good RX capabilities can bust through the Auroral 
zone and work into EU. The rest of us will have to be satisfied with 
Mediterranean and North Africa. Thus far I've heard peeps from Wolf 
DF2PY and Len SM7BIC. ON the other hand out of the blue 4U1GSC (Italy) 
had a great signal at their sunrise two nights ago. Unfortunately I was 
dealing with a line of thunderstorms on that path.

In other comments I tend to agree with Merv and Paul on recent comments. 
I get kinda of sensitive once in a while regarding regarding remote 
operations because I'm in a group of a half dozen or so who  primary 
station is remote and solely for my use taking years to build and 
optimize not to mention maintain. I don't like being lumped into the 
dialup group.

Not being an avid DX'er card carrying member I'll take my poke. The real 
proof of the pudding is in competitions because your "$10,000 radio" is 
not going to work UN5J on FT8 with a 50cent antenna regardless of how 
much power you run. To satisfy the argument my primary station is a 
lowly TS480. My wife on the other hand would like to think I didn't 
spend as much as I did on land and infrastructure. LOL

The ultimate award is competing on fair grounds with your peers and 
getting nominated to Contesting Hall of Fame. This half deaf old timer 
will never achieve that but still enjoys the competition in Zone 3!

With that in mind. Put on your headphones work them whatever way you 
want because in the end it just doesn't matter to anyone except oneself.

73, Bob

W7RH


-- 
W7RH DM35OS


It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein