Topband: Saturday night

[Dave Sharred]

Dave,You have to witness the LF bands from EU, with so many countries in a relatively space, packed on small bands, you don't have a clear frequency. If you have directional receive antennae, that does help. I couldn't raise C6AGU ( eu qrm),  HI3CC didn't hear well, nor PJ2T,  OR ZW5B. But I'm doing an all band effort, so not dedicated to 160.I did work CX6VM, FY5FJ, KP3DX, KP2M, XE2B, PJ4K JT5DX that come to mind73 Dave G3NKC @MD4K Sent from Samsung tablet

-------- Original message --------
From: David Olean <k1whs at metrocast.net> 
Date: 24/11/2019  18:46  (GMT+00:00) 
To: Topband Reflector <topband at contesting.com> 
Subject: Topband: Saturday night 

Hi Top BandersI 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.73Dave K1WHS_________________Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector