I was having a great time tonight, handing put a steady stream of QSOs as one of the 80 Meter QRP Foxes. From 0200 to 0252 UTC, I was going great guns. Then somebody threw a switch and turned the propagation off! From 0252 to 0330 UTC, I had all of 6 QSOs.
Needless to say, that put a big cramp in my QSO goal. I was hoping for 60+ in the hour and a half; but the sudden loss of propagation whittled my QSO total to only 47.
I did operate split listening "DOWN" and it caused the Hounds who were chasing me no problem whatsoever! These QRPers are a fine bunch of fellows; and going outside the norm caused no sweat at all! That was nice to see.
I will post my log to the QFOX e-mail reflector tomorrow. The nice thing is that I get to do this one more time before the season ends. Hope propagation is better next time!
73 de Larry W2LJ
Interesting observation on propagation, Larry. I checked the solar weather trackers such as here and couldn't find anything to account for the sudden loss of propagation. Guess the propagation gods always have a trick up their sleeve! All the best for New Year 2010.
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