Topband: Summer Stew Perry

[Don Kirk]

Hi Rick and gang,

The biggest problem with the band in the summer in the Midwest USA is high
QRN level from lightning.  As an example during the Stew Perry contest this
past weekend our noise floor during hours of darkness in Indiana was
running 20 to 30 dB above our normal noise floor due to lightning which
made it impossible to hear EU if you were just using simple RX antennas
such as EWEs or Tuned Loops, etc.

It's the high QRN level during the summer months in the Midwest US that
causes most of us to disappear from 160 meter activity until the lightning
subsides in Fall which is typically sometime in October.

You (N6RK) as well as K7RAT had nice signals into Indiana during the Stew
Perry contest, and it was great to get both of you into the log as I was
only running 100 watts and using small pennant RX antennas.

73,
Don (wd8dsb)

On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 7:21 PM Richard (Rick) Karlquist <
richard at karlquist.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 6/21/2020 3:41 PM, List Mail wrote:
> > I worked K7RAT (with some difficulty) and that was all.
> >
>
> > Luke VK3HJ
> >
>
>  From California, the band was basically only active
> from sunset until about 0500Z, at which point K7RAT
> was the last man standing, and it didn't seem like
> he had much rate.  He was something like 40 dB over
> S9 here!   After CQing for 10 minutes without
> any calls, I went QRT.  Only ZL was in the dark by
> then.  I was too tired to stay up until VK was in
> darkness.
>
> For the brief time when there was some activity, the
> propagation to the east coast was great.  A dozen or
> two stations in the FM grid field were easily worked.  After
> the contest, I got an email from an Ohio station
> saying I was the only station he heard west of the
> Mississippi.  So maybe I was in the spotlight.
> Come to think of it, I didn't heard any east
> coast stations CQ'ing.  They were all responding
> to my CQ.
>
> K7RAT to some extent made up for KV4FZ not being
> there :-(  He was often the last man standing in this
> contest.
>
> Anyway, I think we have established that the band
> works just fine at our Summer Solstice and we just
> need more activity for this contest.  Before this
> contest was started a few years ago, I had the
> mistaken impression that the band was dead in the summer.
>
> Rick N6RK
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