Topband: ARRL 160

[David Raymond]

Conditions from here in the Midwest have been poor virtually the entire 
season so far, not just the contest.  From N0NI we worked exactly one JA 
during the contest (JA3YBK) and that was a big struggle which took 
several minutes to complete with good TX and RX antennas.  Thus far this 
season I have exactly 10 JA QSOs in the log, the first QSO being 22 
September with JA1LZR who has been QRV faithfully most every morning 
this season (and undetectable most).  On a typical season I would have 
scores of JA QSOs logged by now.  I'm in my fourth decade on TB as a 
DXer and conditions from Midwest NA this season have been as poor as I 
can recall. . . to all parts of the globe, morning and night.  Combining 
that with the abandonment and dearth of CW activity makes for a lot of 
empty CQs and listening to noise.  At some point. sooner or later, 
conditions will change for the better and hopefully that might encourage 
CW activity to return to some degree. . . we can only hope.  In the 
meantime its tough going for CW topbanders.

73 and Seasons Greetings to all. . . Dave, W0FLS

On 12/7/2022 3:30 PM, Richard Karlquist wrote:
> >From central California, perennial big guns JA3YBK and JA5DQH were way
> over S9 in the ARRL 160 about 2 hours before SR.  They had big pileups,
> so I am thinking lots of stations were hearing them, whether or not they
> could work them.
>
> ---
> Rick Karlquist
> N6RK
>
> On 2022-12-07 10:13, Jim Brown wrote:
>
>> On 12/7/2022 6:57 AM, Roger Kennedy wrote:
>>
>>> Well given that several people have posted that conditions were poor, I
>>> guess I should be happy that I managed to work 26 NA stations in the hour I
>>> spent on the band - even more so as I have this horrendous wideband noise on
>>> 160 at the moment!
>> ARRL 160 is a worldwide contest. Propagation varies from one part of the world to another. From my QTH near San Francisco, the only stations I heard from the west were KH6 and KL7 (2,000 miles over water), and I heard very few stations from the east coast (2,800). "DX" was PJ2 and C6 (3,800 miles).
>>
>> 73, Jim K9YC
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