Two hour, QRP, CW sprint.

0030-0230Z, on 4/11/208, which translates to Tuesday night, for most of us.

Details here.

Signals are pretty weak here on 40m.  Just slightly above the noise level.  Called CQ for a few minutes, but didn't get any takers.  Don't see anyone on 80m.

I'll try again in a few minutes.

I worked 21 contacts on 80 meters.
I had N2CN fire up, calling CQ over top of me without asking if the frequency was in use.
So, I decided to just pull the plug.

Holy cow.  The only signal I heard on 80m was a ham who lives about 2 miles away from me. He was on 3550.  He was +20, and splattering about 5khz on either side.

Other than that, silence.

I usually do pretty good in these things.
I think it is my location rather than any operating skill :).
Being in the midwest has it's advantages.

Not that this has anything to do with it, but today I put up a horse fence antenna for 80 meters. I had intended to work this sprint but after I put this antenna up today I figured it would be a good chance to work a bunch of stations to try it out.

It works. It is just a glorified dipole (a dipole made out of something other than just plain wire, but a dipole never the less). But, I wanted to be able to say that I had tried one.

Sometimes I do OK.  Sometimes not.

I had a grand total of 4 QSO's tonight.  It felt like I was spinning my wheels  for the few minutes I called CQ on 40m, so I quickly went back to S&P. Didn't even try 20m.

There's always next month.

I know you know all this but 80 meters is primarily a night time band. And it gets dark earlier here than it does in TX; so 80 will be "open" a lot earlier for me than it is for you. Plus there are a lot of hams densely packed into the east all not that far away.

In my limited experience, it seems like during these sprints, the lion's share of the activity takes place on one band. I have tried working two or even three bands during these sprints and I pick up one or two here and there and then I try another band and it seems like everybody is there. Why, I don't really know.

As someone who lived most of my adult life in Nevada, it seems like ham radio is biased towards the east coast. I don't mean this in a bad way, but because of the time difference it often seemed like the time I was sitting down to operate (in the evening) a lot of the people in the east were going QRT and off to bed. Same thing goes for the lower HF bands: by the time it got dark where I lived and 80 meters was starting to go long, a lot of the east coast stations were closing down their stations to go to bed.

This is just another interesting aspect of ham radio. And something that makes getting five band WAS a little more challenging. It was hard for me to get those eastern US states on the lower bands because of the time difference. And it is hard to get the close in states on the higher bands because they are in the skip zone. And when you are trying to work Alaska and Hawaii you have to consider what time of day it is there and operate at those times.................................

There were actually a lot of contesters on 40m last night, but the signals were quite weak, and combined with the QSB, they were mostly unworkable.  I stuck around for about an hour, hoping it would get better, but it never really did.  I think the combination of QRP, and my attic random wire, just make it tough sometimes.

Not a big deal.  Some days are just better than others, and there are several different sprints to try each month (SKCC, NAQCC, Flying Pigs).