I think some contest stations had directional receive antennas and omni transmitting antennas. There were times when S9 stations couldn't hear me at all, and I suspect they were just listening in a different direction. At other times, I could work stations just marginally out of the noise.
I noticed that on 80m some Chinese stations would be booming in, with a pileup calling, but they'd never work anybody. (I never heard any of them on Top Band.)That I attributed to likely high noise levels in Chinese cities. Some of the big Russian contest stations were also blasting in but couldn't hear any callers, including me. I suspect some them may have been running "Russian Kilowatts." By contrast, the big JA multi-multi contesters could hear and work everything. One problem I frequently encountered was DX stations sending CW way too fast. When a station is just out of the noise with fast QSB, as many frequently are, they're really hard to copy if they're going 45 wpm, especially if they have a short, unusual call, like T5W. 73, Jim W8ZR > -----Original Message----- > From: Topband [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of K6UJ Bob > Harmon > Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2016 08:44 PM > To: [email protected] > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Topband: Contest conditions > > Gary, > Thanks for the report. I am a newbie on 160 and now I know I cant > blame all my receive issues on my lame inverted L :-) > > Bob > K6UJ > > On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 7:30 PM, Gary Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Weird condx here for the contest, I could hear plenty of DX but even > > with a KW, they often couldn't hear me. Sometimes the Rx antenna was > > less helpful to listen with and other times it was incredibly > > effective like someone pulled the plug on all directions except the > > one the DX was at. > > > > Wasn't the antennas, I still made great contacts with some faint DX > > who I could barely hear, it was unusual conditions. > > Think the uncertainty is one of the > > reasons I love 160 as much as I do. > > > > 73, > > > > Gary > > KA1J > > _________________ > > Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband > > > _________________ > Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
