During the fall and winter when I am home at W5ZN I have a morning routine. I'm up early, usually by 4 AM, I check the 160 meter spots, check email and scan the news headlines (I'm not sure why I do that last thing). I just have an intense love of listening for early morning DX to SE Asia and the Pacific on 160 meter CW more so than lsning to EU and AF.

During a fall/winter 160 meter season I would routinely pick up 3 to 5 new ones on 160 meter CW. When COVID hit, things went dead and as I have noted here previously I feared I may be stuck at 282 and never reach the magic 300 number on 160. Of course, being at 282 on a band like 160 meters leaves some very tough ones left to work.

As we all know from the number of DXpeditions this fall/winter, DX activity is back to normal. As a result I picked up J28MD and T33T for new ones on 160. I assume I could nab Bouvet which would make this 160 meter season a win with 3 new ones......BUT WAIT!!!!

This morning I quickly checked 160 spots, email, and the headlines as I normally do. Nothing of interest going on so I went over to the "work desk" to take care of some IARU business and review a document for WRC-23. After a bit, around 1200 UTC I needed to clear my head and thought I would take a peek at the 160 spots and I saw Eddie, XV1X, spotted on 1822 KHz CW. JC, N4IS in south Florida and Jon, AA1K (BIG GUN 160 guy) in Delaware were hearing Eddie. I quickly fired things up after violated K5UR Rule #1 earlier (The first thing you turn on when you walk in the shack is the AMPLIFIER!!) and did not hear Eddie via the direct path to the NW. Then I thought "HEY!!!! check the skewed path to the SW along the grey line" and there he was, weak but Q5 calling CQ!! He was lsning Up 1 so I dropped my call in three times and he came back to me!!!

So, the happy ending to this story is some mornings that appear to be dull and mundane can be REALLY GREAT! Not only was it fantastic to work a new one.......a very difficult new one on 160, it was great to hear signals from that region coming in along the skewed grey line path! Its been about 15 years since I last heard and worked a station via that path (9M2AX).

For you FT8 Lizards, Eddie later moved up to 1840 KHz FT8. I decoded him at -14 via the same path.

Now to try to clear the excitement in my head and get back to reviewing technical documents!!!!

73 Joel W5ZN