20 Meters rather SHORT today

[KB3LIX]

Had an interesting contact today.
While trolling 20 meters, I heard a station in Monroe County Pennsylvania looking for counties.
Got him, no problem.
Monroe county to my location in Washington County is about 250 miles or so.
Rather short for 20 meters. First time I have heard Eastern Pennsylvania on 20 meters.

[k4avl]

Here in NC, I can almost always hear other NC stations, and also a lot of the retirees in FL, except when the band conditions are real bad, then there's no one. Sometimes during these bad times I can only hear DX but not local.
Last night, around midnight, the conditions seemed better than usual, though sometimes a bit of noise. I was able to work AL, AZ, the Windward Islands, Yugoslavia, and New Zealand around midnight. That was a real surprise, the NZ contact was a 59 and sounded almost next door, I seemed to pick up on him before there was a real pileup, and we talked back & forth a few times. He gave me a 57, and I only have a dipole running through the middle of a bunch of trees, 25' up, but I was running 800 watts into it. The CA guys I heard later on around 1AM were copyable, but covered with a lot of QRN.

[NA4BH]

Quote[/b] (KB3LIX @ June 30 2007,16:22)]Had an interesting contact today.
While trolling 20 meters, I heard a station in Monroe County Pennsylvania looking for counties.
Got him, no problem.
Monroe county to my location in Washington County is about 250 miles or so.
Rather short for 20 meters. First time I have heard Eastern Pennsylvania on 20 meters.
I heard you talking to OHI. He had been talking about the strange conditions today. Both of you had great signals into Alabama, of course.

[AG3Y]

All Winter, I was NOT able to talk to my buddy down in Huntsville, AL from Hagerstown, MD, but I DID reach the webcams out in TX and further west.

Now, this Summer, things are reversed. I hardly ever see my transmissions on the TX and west coast webcams, but often do on the Huntsville and Illinois webcams! Interesting, indeed !

73, Jim

[G0GQK]

Twenty metre conditions in Europe have been short for a long time now. I can remember the time when it was impossible to hear any other station within about 500 miles. The situation at present is that there is almost no difference in transmission distances beween 10, 12, 15, 17, 20 30 and 40 metres. The best band to use recently has been 15 mtres and 30 metres at times has been very good with little QSB. The problem is that there aren't any people using 30 metres perhaps if they tuned up and used the band they would find it better than 20 metres where conditions are poor.

G0GQK

[KI4ODO]

I call a local ragchew net on sunday nights (2 meter) and I mentioned the unusual propagation I was hearing on 20 meters last night. I was getting strong signals from the pacific and south into central and south america. Then I had a station from Finland answer my cq on CW later on. Pretty fun last night, hearing Hawaii stations very good from here in NC.

Now granted this is my first summer on 20 meters, so I may not be a good judge of what is normal or not.