Topband: ARRL DX Contest

[W7RH]

Group,

Saturday evening conditions redeemed themselves as if they knew they 
were getting bad mouthed by me. Eastern Europe made it out west starting 
around 0400 moving west until EU sunrise 0800 when they were finally 
shut out. Signals were not super strong but even with low power many 
answered on just one or two calls. All considered it was a darned good 
opening here. Nothing however compared to what I heard and worked during 
an opening when the VP6D operation was  in swing. I made a recording 
that evening of the EU pileup the rivaled 20 meters. Propagation path 
moved in a counter clockwise circle from eastern Mediterranean Ocean, 
the Baltic's then moving to Northern EU, Poland, Sweden followed by The 
British Islands, France, Spain, Portugal, Western Mediterranean and West 
Africa. Of note, the usual eastern EU power house stations were 
non-existent to my ears. Neither were central EU.

The Auroral oval ring had a gaping hole in it last night allowing me to 
slip a signal into Western EU. :)

At that point I grabbed some sleep and came back at 1200 UTC for Asia. 
The final 2 hours netted just three JA and Kim, HL5IVL. Alternately 
beaming SW and NW produced no VK or ZL.

For me this particular contest is a Top Band dream. It has low levels of 
QRM and good activity worldwide. When the band is open this contest is 
very special and opportunity for many to work some new ones.

Operating low power I only called CQ in the morning on the western paths 
with 90% of my operating time S&P.

Thanks to those who responded. I expect some broken calls as my network 
link was experiencing some dramatic intermittent  latency and jitter all 
evening busting my TX sending.

73

Bob, W7RH

160m the Magic Band



-- 
W7RH DM35os

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." - Albert Einstein