Topband: Wednesday Night Activity

[David Olean]

Hello Cecil

I'll bet you had a rough time with the QRN between you and the DX!!

I wonder if the QRN dropped off between 0000 and 05;30 UT?  When I was 
on, it was bad, but I could get calls after maybe 2 or three repeats of 
just the call.  The noise was low in between crashes, so maybe things 
had improved. Looking at the Lightning website, the line of storms 
looked pretty bad after midnight.  I was not there earlier to compare 
things.

Looking at tonight, the storms are centered in GA and SC, so things will 
be bad tonite as well. I will be on again for a bit after about 03:00.

On 12/30/2021 4:30 PM, Cecil acuff wrote:

> I listened around at 00:00 UT up around 1830 and the static crashes from the storms in the upper Midwest was covering anything that might have been on the band. S9+10 on my RX loop.
>
> Cecil
> K5DL
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Dec 30, 2021, at 3:16 PM, David Olean <k1whs at metrocast.net> wrote:
>>
>> I managed to get on 160  CW starting at 05:30 UT and figured I might catch a few early risers on the "Continent".   I was quite surprised at the level of activity. I did not hear many stateside callers, but I was busy for a few hours up until just about Sunrise in Europe. No exotic DX worked, but I managed a number of contacts with new stations for me.  As I was getting close to EU Sunrise, I also got a call from ZL1AZ. He was good copy on my Europe beverage wire, and was 579 when I picked a wire that was aimed the other way.  He peaked at 290 degrees, so the path was skewed northward a bit.
>>
>> I tried a little FT8 near EU Sunrise and set power at 5 watts. I worked two stations in Spain. That was not much fun, so back on CW after only a few minutes, and worked a few more in Britain, Norway and Sweden as daylight was spreading across the mainland.  I managed to not work G3YRO, but I wanted to let him know that I did make an appearance on the Wednesday Activity Night!  I had lots of QRN nearby, which made copy poor as I would miss several letters at a time. I am also finding that my CW is getting worse as my hands suffer from tremors. It is starting to ruin my already bad fist!!
>>
>> 73
>>
>> Dave K1WHS
>>
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