Topband: Saturday night

[Mpridesti]

Dave

I’ll give you some more disappointment. At about 7 PM Saturday night (00Z) an incredible noise came on and wiped out all of bands.  Something local and from the SW. Pointed my 10 m Yagi to the source. Killed my interest at that point and went to bed. 

Got going again at 1130z and the noise was thankfully gone. If it shows again, will have to do some DFing. 

Thought conditions Saturday night were starting out better than the first night. 

When you worked UW2M, worked him after but fighting that noise big at the time. PITA

Regards,

Mark, K1RX


> On Nov 24, 2019, at 1:46 PM, David Olean <k1whs at metrocast.net> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> _________________
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