Topband: J28MD, conditions

[Michael Tope]

I am glad to hear T88WA is not at the hotel club station. The club 
station has a low dipole on 160 which in the past has made a poor showing.

I managed to get a response from P29RO on 160 meter FT8 on Friday 
morning, but didn't think it was a complete QSO. I am new to "hound" 
mode and WSJT-X kept changing my transmit frequency. I think I was 
calling at 1086 Hz, and when I got the response from P29RO, the program 
moved my TX frequency to match the P29s QRG (504 Hz) and responded 
there. Not sure what was going on. In any case, I was a bit stunned to 
see that I showed up in the P29 log. I suppose our exchange meets the 
bare minimum for a QSO - their computer decoded my call and signal 
report and my computer decoded theirs. Definitely not as satisfying as a 
clean CW QSO, but I am pretty certain they were too weak for that. Much 
of the time I wasn't decoding them and couldn't see them on the 
waterfall display.

73, Mike W4EF....................


On 11/5/2022 10:30 AM, Wes wrote:
> Not making much noise here, but sure hearing a lot.  I did work PJ4K 
> on 10/30 on SSB no less.  I'm almost sorry to say I dropped down to 
> FT8 and worked 25 JA stations in a run.  On 11/2 I worked DU7ET and 
> that's it from my modest station in the Sonoran Desert.  The Pacific 
> expeditions, the mainstays from the west side of the country, are 
> non-starters. P29RO has decided no CW on TB because of hearing 
> problems (I know the feeling).   A35GC hasn't shown up and T88WA is 
> supposedly still building an antenna.  Unfortunately, the guys down 
> under seem to quit before I'm out of bed, even at 4:30 AM like this 
> morning.  I think that after Bouvet, whether I work them or not, I'll 
> convert the inverted-L to something more useful.
>
> Wes  N7WS
>
> On 11/5/2022 9:00 AM, David Raymond wrote:
>> Greetings Topbanders. . .
>>
>> I've spent a considerable amount of time on watch this past week for 
>> J28MD on Topband (CW).  While they've spent a fair amount of time on 
>> TB I haven't yet had success yet in spite of my ongoing efforts.   I 
>> believe it was this past Tuesday night when Joel, W5ZN, said they 
>> appeared briefly out of the noise (about 10 minutes or so and did 
>> have success with his BSEF-8 and Hi-Z 8 arrays in diversity)  then 
>> disappeared the rest of the evening. Wednesday night's opening to NA 
>> was much longer starting on the East coast and slowly sweeping 
>> westward with quite a few NA making it in the log (EC + 5's, 8's, & 
>> 9s', VE). Unfortunately the prop just never quite made it this far 
>> west. They barely peaked out of the noise here in Iowa Wednesday 
>> evening (NA time) just enough to get me excited and dump my call a 
>> few times hoping for even a marginal QSO. . . but no cigar. It's a 
>> little frustrating to see that they always QRT about 30 minutes or so 
>> prior to their SR but they get credit for being on faithfully on CW 
>> and FT8 as well.  I know they're getting close to wrapping up but 
>> hopefully they'll be on (CW) again this evening.
>>
>> It's been good to have some DX operations QRV and bring some much 
>> needed life to TB (which sure hasn't had much). . .TY0, 5V, and now 
>> J28, A3, and T88.  The prop has been very poor.  CQing here in the 
>> evening brings no DX responses and only a handful of EU EBN hits so 
>> far this season.  Thankfully mornings have activity from our very 
>> stalwart VK friends (VK3HJ, VK2WF, VK6GX, VK6IR, VK6LW, others) but 
>> only a handful of JA QSOs so far this season (8 to be exact).  JA1LZR 
>> gets kudos for being QRV almost every morning (NA time),  but without 
>> much prop, I think only limited success.    I have yet to hit the 
>> VK4CT RBN CQing here in the mornings.  I don't think this is totally 
>> attributable to the increased SFI. . . prop from here was only 
>> marginally better two seasons ago when the SFI was very low.
>>
>> All that said, I encourage everyone to get on and make some noise.
>>
>> 73. . . Dave, W0FLS (in Iowa)
>>
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