Topband: Stew Perry from VK3

[vk3io]

As Luke VK3HJ has stated, the QRN was bad here in VK3 and probably all 
over VK, including at VK6LW, I expect.

But I pushed through the QRN pain barrier and even called CQ test a few 
times, but no replies, not even from locals or ZL's.

So I ended up only calling any strong signals heard and accepted that 
even though they may be strong, they might not be listening for my 
direction, which was probably the case with JA4UYB.

Northern Europe did come good, but not until right at my sun rise time 
(1856utc) and surprisingly continued good until about 30 minutes after. 
Maybe that was because of my "Low Dipole" , being only 100 fth and 
things might have been better or worse if I had a good vertical.

Nothing even heard from southern or western Europe, which includes the UK.

Only the Ukraine, USSR  and Lithuania. How odd.

Both RD4F and UD4F were strong and about the same strength and that 
caused me some confusion in the QRN. Did I get UD4F call correct, yes or 
no? So I wasted some time to clear that up.

ZF9CW was good and strong at 1130utc, like in the CQ WW DX Contest, when 
he obviously pointed his antenna my way. He must have a great 
directional antenna system and heard me first call.

There were only a few strong signals from North America and that was 
only after 1220utc (no sun set peak here anytime this year, as far as I 
have noticed), which is getting late here, being 11.30pm local and with 
all the banging and crashing, up to 9+30dB, with the S meter never going 
less than 9, that no doubt would continue all night, I gave up and went 
to bed.

Maybe there was a peak in signal strength to USA later, after 1230utc, 
like what seems to be the trend of recent times, but it was not worth 
taking a chance on.

Last year was much better and this year would have been good, if we had 
lower or no QRN.

Never-the-less, I look forward to the next contest, like the CQ WW 160m 
CW at the end of January and then SSB at the end of February, when our 
QRN levels usually are less.

Cheers, from Ron.