[Lowfer] Daytime EAR...in Kansas!

[JD]

Just got back to town and will need some time to analyze everything, bit
it's clear that Saturday was an exceptional circumstance.  About an hour
before sunrise today, EAR "switched off" as it usually does in the
morning...or almost off.  There continued to be faint wisps that again
started looking promising at mid-morning, but they never quite made it to
yesterday's levels.  Another gap from before noon to just after, then
hints of signal; but once again, not up to yesterday's.

QRN last night remained remarkably low, and that was true for the daylight
hours as well.

I continued monitoring through sunset, hoping for as quick a return to
visibility of EAR from the pre-sunset fade, as occurred last night, but it
didn't happen. The slow wandering carrier that's usually 0.5 to 1.5 Hz
below EAR at night showed up on schedule, but only faint traces of RF that
had the slope of EAR about them.

Tonight is NOT going to be another low-QRN miracle, so continuing to watch
EAR would not yield valid propagation comparisons. Median static at one
hour post-sunset was around S3, with frequent peaks of S5-S9; fairly
typical when there are distant storms over the continent somewhere, and
about at the point where I can't see Illinois without the aid of
substantial nighttime skywave. Apparently there is some of that to help me
out, though. I switched over to the watering hole, where I've already got
part of the WM graphic and some WSPR15 from SIW that looks as if it ought
to decode OK. We'll see.