I went into this contesting thinking the QRP record for Oregon would be easy to break with 10 hours or so of effort. WRONG!! While conditions sounded good before sunset - conditions seemed really poor to many areas of the country. I never did manage to work Texas, or much of anything on the east coast.
About half of my QSOs were made CQing and having west coast guys answer me. I would find a "clear" frequency, which was likely something a strong European was using (which we could not hear at all out west). Occasionally, I would hear someone call and work whomever it was I couldn't hear. There was one case where W8JI called me. This was during a time that NOBODY was calling me. I think I CQ'd for 20 minutes and he was the only guy who called. I was pretty certain he must had been calling someone else - and I sent him a "?" - but he came back and signed his call again. I sent a report - and was hoping they would send my call to remove any doubt about what was going on - however, all they did was send 5NN GA. Now - if I had been running other stations on the east coast - I probably wouldn't have wondered about this - but since nobody else was hearing me - I was stunned that they could hear me. I eventually found their CQ frequency and worked them again. This brings up a point - there are a lot of times on 160 where it is very useful for the search and pounce station to send the callsign of the CQing station - so the CQing station knows for sure who is being worked. The discussion of off frequency stations also highlighted this need - as that prevents someone from "working" and unintended station if their frequency is slightly off. Many people have adopted this operatating practice - and if you are someone like W8JI who can do "impossible" things - it might be good to do it more often. Tree N6TR _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
