Topband: Saturday night

[David Olean]

Hi Top Banders

I was dabbling in the CQ WW contest last night (Nov 24 UT) and noted a 
few things that seemed quite different to me here in NE USA. The normal 
situation at my sunset occurred. I could hear many many EU stations but 
almost none of them could hear me. I am used to that. I quit and had 
dinner and spent some quality time with the XYL for the evening. At 
about 0300 UT I was QRV again.  A storm was blowing through New England 
and There was a fair amount of lightning static, but I was able to call 
many stations who were very good copy, but almost always got the 
impression that I was barely audible with them. I am running 1300-1400 
watts output. Most stations took three or four calls to get my call 
correct. A few gave up and had my call wrong but went on to other 
callers. Other loud stations CQed in my face. This was very different 
from many of my past experiences. I actually went and checked the 
electrical passband of my TX antenna to make sure it was performing 
normally. (It was) I also kept looking at the wattmeter to make sure 
that I was transmitting into the antenna!

I did note that there was deep and rapid QSB over a 30 second period. I 
am wondering what the hearing conditions were in Europe Saturday night 
on 1.8 MHz. I suspect that noise was a big problem.

Around 1000 UT until my sunrise arpund 1200, I did a fair amount of 
listening but heard very little in the way of Pacific DX.  I was 
operating un assisted so do not know who was QRV, but tuning across the 
band produced only two HI stations heard from the Pacific. No KL7, no 
islands, and no VK/ZL. A few CQs produced no QSOs for points.  Very 
disappointing morning.

73

Dave K1WHS