11/21/2003 | N8II What a difference from last year, solar flux down, geomag activity up!
It was much harder to hold a run frequency with LP and the longer skip zone on 20M especially late Sunday morning and early evening.
I had to try 75M early around 2345Z and started a good run right away, running 101 Q's in the 00Z hour. Just after 01Z a skip zone started forming and all of New England plus even MI started skipping over me with fluttery signals; even W1B1GQR was puny weak. I was just about ready to bag it when 75 began improving around 03Z and by 04Z, I had another 101 hour. Sunday AM was OK on 75, but the skip zone stayed too long to make 40M useful til around 15Z. Sunday around 18Z, 15M was wide open to CA with only a few AZ, NM, and TX stations as well, nothing from the Rocky mtns. or Northwest. Around 02Z the flutter and skip zone returned to 75M.

The sections came pretty easily but somewhat slowly without having to waste time searching, except for AK and NT. I found KL7J loud on 20M about 23Z, but never heard VY1.

The secret to success was running lots of casual ops, especially on 75M; QSO total was 575 there. Thanks for the Q's! -- N8II