[600MRG] Ground Wave Propo

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

Here is a quote from Jeff Herman's article concerning propagation on 600 
meters.

"Regardless of whether it was by accident or choice, what was handed 
down to us was a wavelength with excellent evening propagation.

Starting at about 2100 local 500 Kc. would come alive. Any ship or shore 
station within 3000-4000 miles could be heard by an excellent 
combination of ground wave and sky wave - nothing was missed within 
this radius! Shore stations of more than 5000 miles were easily copied 
(Australia and New Zealand boomed in nightly). Daytime propagation 
consisted of only ground wave: 300-500 miles was the maximum range 
possible. Thus most daytime traffic was passed on the HF channels."

And this:

"Late nights could become a bit of a bore for some shore ops, heavy 
eyelids and such. So out of boredom (or maybe by ``accident'') a single dit 
would ring across the Pacific, only to be answered by another dit possibly 
several thousands of miles away. Then all hell would break loose: every 
shore station and any ships with an on-duty op would be sending dits! For 
several seconds 500 sounded like a machine gun - 100 or more carriers 
were ditting away. As quickly as it started it would fade away.

A variation of this was someone sending a single GE (good evening); of 
course it would be impolite not to respond in kind so someone else would 
answer with GE. Within a half second at least one hundred GE's would 
flood the frequency! My log entry would look like this:

GE / GE / GE / GE / GE / (OPNOTE: AT LEAST 100 GE'S SENT) 500 
1123Z "


Kenneth G. Gordon W7EKB

"Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway."--- John   
Wayne