On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:50:42 -0500, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:

Messing around the lower end of 75 tonight listening to the high speed
traffic nets (yeah - they still exist much to my delight). Once they
closed down, I moved down the band to 3.520.50 and heard a faint call.
I switched from my 80 dipole to the long wire and got a couple of
extra s units - HS0B - thought I was hearing things. I was already
tuned up - gave a shout and damn if he didn't hear me. :)

Must have been long path - there was a lot of fade, but we got the QSO
exchange and quick name exchange before the pile up started. I tried
listening through the QRM - he was still there, but really faint.

Must have hot spotted.

Interesting anyway - the low bands seem really mediocre. I handed out
a few Qs today for the CW WW CW - maybe 200 in all - Europe turned on
and off like a freakin light switch. Same with the JAs which are
normally all over 20 meters around sundown.

Damn global warming.

I blame Canada.

Wow - now I'm hearing all kinds of UAs - band shifted quick.

Hmmm - me thinks it's time to inspect the Beverages. :)

Cool. Unfortunately my 23 ft whip on the boat doesn't really cut it
on the low bands and I'm not set up for CW. I check into the Maritime
Mobile Service Net on 14.300 once in a while just to check the rig
out. We listen to it a lot when we're out cruising. Mrs B finds it
reassuring that there's a whole army of people out there ready and
willing to help out. They provide quite a service.