Great story Joel..
I remember my old days and getting DXCC on 160 #18 back in December 1980, 42+ years ago!! Back then I had a nice 60 foot shunt fed tower with my bottom capacitors (parallel and series) and nice HF antennas on top. Without computers and such back then, one had to search and search and hope a weak one would show up on CW.
In those days we had a large 10-12 NA DXing group on 160m who would give a single ring phone call and we would all meet on a certain 3.8 mc secret SSB frequency. Each would call 2-3 people .. so, if we got a single ring, you would quickly single ring 2 others and then quickly get to the rig and turn on the amp. It worked well. 👍👍
When moving to Paris, AR in July of 1983, I again had a shunt fed tower for 160m, big antennas on top, and a dipole offset from the tower 4 feet, angled to Europe. Occasionally I would go outside and reroute the dipole to East-West or NW-SE… Kept adding countries until we moved to Texarkana, TX in January 1990. Things slowed down after that, me being gone 5 days a week to work in Little Rock as Medicare Medical Director and only being to chase DX on weekends when returning to Texarkana. 🤢 My CW totals suffered a lot and K5UR was ruling that mode big time. I never caught up with him since he had more deleted CW countries than me. I remain 2 behind him at 353. Great memories once again, chasing DX.😁
Did well on 160m when we moved to the country outside Springdale, 3 tall towers and a hand rotated 160m ½ wave sloper dipole, bottom about 4 feet off the ground, held down by a car tire. Had a shunt feeding a tower on 160m too but the sloper was better most of the time. Moving to town in 1995 ended my days of competing on 160m with a 38 foot tower and low 80/160 dipole. ✔
So, Joel, the old days were fun and you had to LISTEN each day at the right time or hoped a friend would make a phone call and TELL YOU who and where some DX was on 160m, sometimes 80m. DX Summit and other spotting websites changed things for the better, with 100s of DXers calling and some spotting the good DX. At least I do NOT get up very often to work DX in the midnight to morning sunrise openings. I am off 160 for good but what GREAT memories I had on that band. >> K5UR remembers the Little Rock days and our 160m DX chasing. Great fun and memories. Back then I was 40 years younger and did not need as much sleep as I do now! 😊
73 to all great ADXA members..
San YY
Sent from Mail for Windows
From: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2023 7:32 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ADXA] Some Mornings are OK, Some are good, very few are GREAT!!!
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