I find it very interesting to watch the reverse beacon network come up with Skimmer spots.
http://www.reversebeacon.net/dxsd1/?f=3 It is interesting in that real signal reports are involved, signal-to-noise in the skimmer RX to be specific and shows the margins available. A "CQ CQ DE K2AV K2AV" is enough to invoke it. Last night was interesting because of the half dozen or so USA skimmers that will usually report my signal, only the west coast and EI6IZ, S50ARX were spotting me at some points. The rest of USA were buried by the amazing worst-of-summer-grade-nasty QRN from what ever that is off Florida coasts and did not report my signal. Even so, IV3PRK, G3ROO and others were busy through it, making long strings of QSO's. The historical data with spots does not exist for several years ago, but continues to show DX breakthroughs, if one is paying attention. For instance, using: http://www.reversebeacon.net/analysis/ ...pick Jan 7 for date, North America, K3LR for beacon staton, and search for IV3PRK. You will see that his signal was well out of the noise for a long time on the graph and shows that he was on the band for over three hours, roughly 02Z to 05Z, even on a noise with awful mid-summer QRN levels. I think in the past we were USED to having to scan for hours, and so put in the time to find DX coming up. The ongoing reliance on manual spots is probably contributing to decline, as some that I know have stated that they have quit spotting. The skimmer spots, frankly, are better, more timely, don't screw up call signs or mis-post frequencies. They also show propagation moving across the continents with the signal to noise data. I AM wondering what is responsible for so many summer-grade QRN storms off-shore this season. 73, Guy. _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
