Topband: CQWW160: Night 2

[Michael Tope]

There was a decent opening from here in Southern California to Europe on 
Saturday night around 0500 UTC that lasted approximately two and a half 
hours. Over the course of the opening, I heard stations from 9A, OM, YU, 
S5, DL, PA, G, GW, E7, and GJ. I was able make QSOs with DL and GJ (and 
I had a maybe with E7). I was hoping that similar circumstances would 
materialize for the Sunday morning opening to Asia. When I heard K0DI in 
Florida work a JA station, I became even more convinced that we were in 
for a JA bonanza later in the morning. Unfortunately it was a huge bust. 
It was as if someone dropped a huge D-layer cloud over Japan. Strangely 
enough, several BY stations seemed to be unaffected by the poor 
propagation, in particular, BY4SZ who had a massive signal in Southern 
California. Unfortunately, he was hearing impaired. I think W6YA might 
have gotten through to him, but I certainly didn't. I heard one DU 
station, but he also couldn't hear me.

Never take propagation from granted on Topband :-)

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

On 1/29/2023 12:51 PM, Tree wrote:
> Could have been band conditions not working very well.  Felt like a thick
> cold blanket was on top of the band last night.
>
> This morning - normally very loud stations in MT were just regular signals
> - not much stronger than BY4SZ.
>
> Only managed one JA QSO with JH4UYB this morning.  JA3YBK could not hear
> me.  Band was quiet - but very attenuated.
>
> Surprised however to work 3W1T right at sunrise and 4F2KWT before that.
> Heard a few other DU's but they were not hearing me.
>
> Tree N6TR / K7RAT
>
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:37 PM Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 1/29/2023 9:25 AM, W3HKK at roadrunner.com wrote:
>>> had to run the 52' vertical- 0.25 wave 160m
>>> INV-L against a single ground rod. But it works quite well, even so.
>> It wasn't "working quite well" when you were buried in my noise last
>> night. We worked, but it wasn't easy. Thanks for the QSO.
>>
>> 73, Jim K9YC
>> _________________
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