Topband: Equinox EU DX season report at VE6WZ

[VE6WZ_Steve]

Every winter DX season I track my transpolar Europe QSOs on 160m CW.
This season was perhaps one of the worst in many years, especially for the path to southern EU.
For the 7 months Sept-March I worked 85 EU-AF.
Here is a list of the calls that made it into the VE6WZ log:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17oSt53iDighc2-FmVDfrniJBhlroxihQ/view?usp=sharing <https://drive.google.com/file/d/17oSt53iDighc2-FmVDfrniJBhlroxihQ/view?usp=sharing>
(Prior years I will usually work over 1,000 EU).


My QTH is at 51 deg. North, and just on the eastern slopes of the Rocky mountains, so "almost" west coast.
What stood out this season was how the polar path from VE6 to N. Europe continued to open, even while the solar wind and geo-magnetic activity was rather high.
Numerous times this winter I managed QSOs with Stig, OZ4MM , John SM5EDX and Andy DL8LAS even during periods of "quasi-AU" conditions when the solar wind was well over 400-500km-s. I remember one night I had visible AU from my back deck and still worked OZ4MM that evening.
Both OZ4MM and DL8LAS are located in the very northern parts of EU, very close to the tip of Sweden across the Baltic sea.
At the same time, during most of these QSOs, there was no propagation to south-central EU. Karel OK1CF is almost always CQing, but we only managed 14 QSOs this winter, and most of those were earlier in the season.  I also noticed that during these N. EU openings, the band didn't seem to open for the guys down south and west coast USA.
Its almost as though the path from VE6 to N. EU is shooting through a gap in the AU oval.
Only on days with very low solar wind and geo-mag activity did the band open into the S. EU which is not surprising, but it WAS surprising for N. EU to be bubbling through when things were hot.

Anyway, a rather underwhelming season, but absolutely not surprising since we are just coming off the solar peak, but there is still DX to be worked on TopBand!!

73, de steve ve6wz