Topband: V84SAA 160m Report 14 Feb 2019 0430z

[k1zm at aol.com]

Hi Gang
Last night we got out to the beach CW site an hour or so before SS.  We tried hard for the east coast, but I believe all that we worked were stations West of the Mississippi river.
Some high points were these:
1) We picked up 25 more NA stations during our SS opening 
2) Interesting catches were KH7XS, AH6QM, D4C, XX9X, 
3) Our new DHDL, aimed at 150 degrees, paid off in spades - as we strung together about 8 VK stations - many whom had advised us earlier in the week that they were copying us and calling - but despite hearing them - copying their calls was very difficult until last night when it was far easier to hear them - so that worked.
3) I think we worked something like 150 stations overall bringing our 160m total to about 3,600 Topband qso's.  I should point out that our DUPE percentage is HIGH - something like 365 dupes as I recall.
4) I tried at our SR this morning and heard nothing at all from NA - although I had a sked with VO1HP but did not hear Frank - having heard him well two days ago and he has heard us at least twice so far.
5) The Topband pileups have slowed down now and we seem to be left with callers out of EU who really want to work us but probably have lesser equipped stations and perhaps lower power.  I say this because it often takes me 3 minutes to copy and confirm a callsign now - which makes the rate quite slow.  No matter - We know many want their chance to work V8 on 160m and we will keep at it for as long as we can to please as many as we possibly can on Topband.
6 The ARRL CW DX Contest is this weekend and I have not heard from K1LZ how we wishes to structure our operations.
Our choices might be to work PHONE and FT8 only - and limit our CW activity recognizing the global impacts of the contest.
On Topband - personally I might favor coming on at both our Grayline periods (SR and SS) and staying on 1805.5 qsx up 3 - since only a small amount of contest activity on CW ever occurs below 1810khz. No promises on this one - but that makes sense to me.
A number of us visited the home of V85A yesterday - I did not myself -  but I know many did and ADI S55M managed to fix V85A's amplifier which had been down.  I did hear talk of perhaps doing some of the contest from there by some of our ops - but this is a rumor at this point
It is now around12:30PM local time and I am gonna catch some ZZZ's and head out to the beach to work our SS opening in a few hours - I surely hope we have some conditions to the East of the Mississippi river then - I missed perhaps the best night two days ago - and I know there are many who still want to work us in W2/W3/W4. - I did not mention W1 - but that too - it is just so hard to work that region - it is far easier on our morning LP route - but even this path is totally variable. It only opens well once in awhile but we will be there trying rest assured!
GL to all - we hope to log more of you in the coming days.  We are nearing the end of this soon!
73 JEFF   K1ZM/VY2ZM

Jeff BriggsDXing on the Edge: The Thrill of 160 Meters Available worldwide through BookBaby, Array Solutions, DX Engineering, Radio Society of Great Britain, & Amazon