[PaQSO] Which bands are best?

[w3hkk at roadrunner.com]

WW8OH (30 miles east of Columbus OH, and 150 miles west of the PA line) ran  two 100w stations:
-a 5 OP SSB station ( 40'-10' high Fritzel inverted V)
-and a 2 OP cw station (62 ft avg ht 160m horizontal loop.)

Results:
512 QSOs in 66 counties ( Oh, where were you, Frank-lin?) just missing another Clean Sweep this year ( but the  placque  for  our 2012 Clean Sweep is proudly hanging on our wall.)  This year's QSO total was about 10% higher than in 2012 when we took 2nd place nationally ( outside of PA)  among all entries.

Ohio Operating notes:
 
Skip Distance: PA is 100 miles away at its nearest point (SW corner) and nearly 500 miles away at the farthest point. 40-80-160 are our meat and potatoes.

We operated the entire 22 hours.  That makes our per station rate 11.6 Q's/hr.  Pretty slow going.  For some reason, the rates on 40m never got very high...somewhere around 25 or so the first hour or two, then downhill from there.  Even Saturday afternoon was pretty slow.

So Id have to say the skip between PA and central Ohio was not as good as in the past.  We just mined the bands relentlessly looking for you guys.  Worked nearly all the  big guns ( including 8 Q's with the bonus station!), and medium guns, but seemed to have fewer little pistols/casual ops available this year.  Not sure why.  Maybe we can attribute it to  being at the high end of the current sunspot cycle, and the resultant increased D layer absorption during the afternoon hours.  

40m is famous here ( during our  special event stations and other contests)  for having  a brownout  between 2-5 pm, where rates get very low.  There are  good signals around, just not  many of them.  So during this time we exhaustively plied the  other  bands ( 80, 20, 15, 10) desperately seeking someone. But not much luck.

40m is the band we live and die with during daylight hours. 80m comes alive around 7 pm and is our 2nd best band, but 40 always gives us our best rate.
20 and 160 are good for a handful or two of  contacts
15 gave us 1 contact.
10 gave us 0.

On Sunday, there was an even greater scarcity of PA stations heard on 40, and we found ourselves again continually changing bands looking for  someone to work.  20m turned out to be  our third best band, with a couple of weak but copiable signals each time I listened there.  No such luck on 15 or 10m.  I often went to 80 but it was dead until around 7 pm when somebody turned on a switch. 160m is potentially a good band for us but I get the feeling Im not there when you guys are.  So maybe I need to work on my "timing"  on 160m. Is there a time when most 160 activity occurs? Or is it spread out during Sat evening?  Is it ON THE HOUR?  Randomly through the night? Higher during the last 3 hrs of Sat? In any case, we could  do more on 160 than we currently do, assuming you have enough room for he antenna.  I wonder how many PA ops can get on 160, compared to 80-40-20m? The numbers would be interesting.

In any event, as the current cycle winds down, my guess is Ohio will be able to copy more and more 40m PA stations during the daytime and evening hours, and that the current general propagation conditions are the least favorable we will face for the next 5-6 years.  

Propagation is a real unknown, and while an important factor, it matters most simply who shows up.  And I think nobody does a better job of encouraging participation than  the folks at NARC, and all around PA.  Here's one selfish vote for doing more on 160m.

Finally, I cannot say enough how much we appreciated the /R and /M stations who were a large part of our final contact totals especially during those final hours.  Thanks guys. You make a huge difference.