Asian propagation lurched backward this morning, resulting in a clunker session with audio from only a few big guns, And of those, only the Korea stations on 972 and 1566 managed any respectable peaks, with the Japanese big guns stuck in anemia.
1566-HLAZ (at a fair level) was the only Asian with audio at my 1305 start time, but careful listening on 594, 693 and 747 revealed ghostly audio from the NHK big guns if a DXer was willing to wait around for it (which I wasn't), 972-HLCA was only a modest carrier up until around 1320, but in a pretty wacky moment (as if to show that the ionosphere still had a sense of humor) the Korean signal went from S1 up to S9 at 1321, only to collapse back down to practically nothing. Meanwhile the Japanese service on 1566-HLAZ was the only decent Japanese audio all morning as 594, 693 and 747 were stuck around threshold levels, even around the usual peak propagation time of 1330. The second tier Asians on 603, 657 and 738 were not impressed with the clunker propagation and stayed at modest carrier levels, while the Chinese stations all took the morning off (which it seemed like a sensible DXer also should have done, after the first band check).
73 and Good DX,
Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
7.5" loopstick CC Skywave SSB Ultralight +