[UK-CONTEST] Logger32&ADIF

[Clive Whelan]

Dave/G4BUO wrote



<I found 15m hard work, stations in New England were generally weak and I
never did work Vermont on that band.>

Got that one, but incredibly missed VE2 and VE9. In 7 land, only got AZ and
WY, but in 0 land only missed ND. DC was a got-away ( well a no-show really)
as usual.

Found propagation quite interesting. Of course, the S5s, 9As, and Is were
working stuff that I just couldn't hear in the late morning, just the usual
latitude effect of course in poor conditions. However, it was still the more
northerly-viz New England- stations who opened the band from that side, all
the usual suspects, KC1XX, K1KI,KE1F et al, and amazingly W3LPL was only
about ten minutes behind. LPL must be a truly amazing station, even by their
standards. Once the bnd was open however the sothern states were m-u-c-h
louder.

So firing from darkness into the light, the "easting" favours the W1s more
than the "southing" favours the W4s. My best guess is that, on this side,
G/EI do get some advantage as the band is closing, since it was clear that
as soon as it was just dark here-say 18:15- the band fell away very quickly,
and at that point it would have been well dark in the Balkans. Even so this
doesn't really square with conventional theory, since at say 18:15, the mid
point of the path would have still been in broad daylight from G. One must
assume that after local noon, the F layer will no longer refract highish
angles, and that possibly multi hop at much lower angles is required with
the final refraction taking place at about 15 degrees West, which would now
be in dusk. I guess that this is where stations with antennas higher than my
massive 29ft might reap an advantage! Whatever, this is where I think
contesters are very well placed for propagation studies, and it is perhaps a
pity that we don't liase more than we do with the scientific wallas.


73


Clive
GW3NJW