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160m

ZL7C Operators Newsletter #3
Written by Wilbert ZL2BSJ on 22 October at 2100 UTC

ZL7, 22 Oct, 21:00 UTC...

A quick note to comment on our 160 m during 22 Oct 2002 UTC, possibly of interest to the top banders who tried to work us, during the past two days.

A couple of hours before local sunset, the weather moved in. We came close to shutting everything down due to lightning, but luckily it went around us.

Well before local sunset, at 05:15 UT we were once again calling CQ on 1830.5 and listening down, as the rain came down. The resulting rain-static and QRN crashes prevented us from hearing much.

I can't tell you exactly what happened as, at this point, I was off for some sleep (only got 4 hours the previous 2 nights). Steve G4EDG started off, and, judging by the log, the great sunset opening into G/GW/EI we had on the previous night did not happen.

When I came on, at 12:30 UT, Steve and Hiro had put 50-odd stations in the log, mainly JA and North America. By ZL-standards, the 160 m band was still very noisy. Hiro told be that even the big JA stations had been relatively weak.

As the terminator travelled across the US, I logged several US stations. some of which didn't seem to hear us too well, with several stations calling but not coming back with a report. Some of the W6 and W7's however were good copy.

It was certainly a struggle to copy at our end. Shortly before local sunrise, the JA signals started coming up, and I logged several who weren't hearing me earlier on.

We finished up with more than 80 stations in the 160 m log, which made it all worthwhile.

As an aside: the reason for us being on 1830.5 is that the ground- mounted vertical we are using has a narrow SWR bandwidth, which means we can't operate on our intended frequency without tripping the safety circuit in the amplifier. In order to still be able to work JA, we are listening down, typically around 1823 kHz.

No decision has yet been made on tonight (local), but my pick is that we'll be on 80 m CW for a change, but we'll be back on top band at some point.

Wilbert, ZL2BSJ