[600MRG] really good condx - friday night / saturday morning

[John Langridge]

Condx last night were really quite good here in NTX.  The storms plaguing much of NA were much fewer in number than the previous session, where coverage seemed to be coast-to-coast and s/n suffered tremendously.  Last night's local noise level after dark was around S7, which has tended to be a demarcation point for great condx for summer.  I was not disappointed.  Something only typical on remarkable summer nights thus far is that the early reports from the NE are very widely distribtured  and simultaneous rather than just being heard by one or two larger stations.  This was the case last night, ranging from KU4XR in the South to VE3EAR further up north.  After indicating that I was going to stay at 40% over night, of course I switched to 50%...It always works that way..


While all this was going on, it was reported by John WG2XKA that he was being heard in the low -20's by a station in the shetland islands...I think he ended up with 4 reports, all in the -20's.  How often has that been reported in July?  does anyone know?

No excursions to KL7 last night from here.  I've always felt I was living on borrowed time with that one and just grateful to have the spots that have occured this summer.

Levels here overall were good enough for digital QSO's with the usual suspects like XJM and XXM and CW would have been very easy  on a number of occasions with XJM.  I did not check the band in the middle of the night as I simply turned off my alarm when it went off.. long day.

So the band continues to amaze.  I would be very interested in hearing from XSH stations who remained active through the summer in the past about their experiences.  It was definitely not this good last year (or was it and we just didn't have enough active stations to know it?)...The receive stations continue to show up in droves... It appears that over 30 stations were active in some capacity over night...By contrast, 160m only had about 6 listed.. wow.

73 - this is fun stuff!

John XIQ