Downhill fast

As great as conditions were on Friday night, that’s how fast they went downhill over the weekend. Not sure how things went for the state QSO parties, but for casual DXing, things were the pits.

Personally, I would reckon this was all the side effects from the geomagnetic disturbance that resulted from the CME that recently occurred. As a result, most of the DX stations that I were able to hear were very weak, and the QSB was fast and deep.  For instance, I was listening to EA2DD today on 17 Meters. One second, he was as high as 569 – the next he was ESP.

Even though the SSN & SFI numbers remained favorable, the A & K indices rose high enough to be troublesome. The good news is that things should change for the better rather quickly. Maybe when I get home from work tomorrow evening, things will be better.

One consolation this weekend was hooking up fellow blogger, John N8ZYA. We had a decent rag chew type QSO on Saturday evening, and that made up for the otherwise lackluster Saturday and Sunday.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

3 Responses to “Downhill fast”

  • Mike KG9DW:

    Larry, I’d agree that conditions were certainly not as good as they have been. I still managed to work Bosnia-Herzegovina for the first time, and I snagged K1JT using JT9-1 on 20m. I have to say, having a JT9 QSO with its creator Joe Taylor is something I’ll remember for a long time.

  • Bill - WA8MEA:

    Saturday I worked a few new counties in the three different QSO Parties. But Sunday….what a mess! Condx just deteriorated as the day progressed.

    I finally threw in the towel and went outside to do some yard work….

  • Jonathan KA8KPN:

    On Saturday, I worked Bonaire (new to me) and Hawaii (new to me in Texas) and got QSO’s in all three QSO parties, which isn’t bad considering the wet shoestring I’m using as an antenna. The QSB on 15m was pretty bad, but 20m worked well. On Sunday, I had a bad headache and a meeting so I decided not to operate at all. It sounds like I didn’t miss much.

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