some nice signals (by recent standards) from 1242, 1422, 1566 at 1540UT and
later â.mostly Japanese; nothing below 1134 though.

best wishes,

Nick

>From the chicago suburbs, I worked about 100 QSOs on and off during the
contest. My condx are T top loaded 40 foot vertical TX was running between
500 and 1KW. RX antennas various: 4 square, k9ay, a couple of beverages.
For some reason I cant figure out, my reversible DHDL antenna set not
working properly. Anyway, I worked every NA station I could hear with no
problems. I worked several mexican stations, several VI stations, and
several caribean stations with no problem. I heard no european stations. I
will say, for me, those stations usually come thru later in the evening and
into the morning and this year, I was asleep by 10 :). From my half hearted
observations, there wasnt anything spectacular about condx from here in the
midwest.

Mike

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 11:23 PM Mark Connelly via IRCA <
irca@hard-core-dx.com> wrote:

>
>
>

In some ways worse (the lower band was almost completely dead), in some ways better (there was a lift at the upper end of the band around local sunrise)

pretty darn good audio (all of it understandable by a native speaker, at least briefly):

no

Reasonable audio at times during the period (much of it understandable by a native speaker, though often battling with splash or noise):

1566 HLAZ woman in Chinese followed by female vocal music 1542UT. This first showed about 1530UT, and lasted until after 1600UT, but not at this good a level

not so reasonable audio, occasional words or phrases in splash or noise could be understood by a native speaker:

1593 CNR1 woman talking //6175 1539UT

Burbles in the splatter and noise (if lucky, language might be guessed at by cadence of talk, or parallel established by changes in talk or music)

972 woman talking, maybe Korean? 1527UT

1557 man talking, Chinese intonation at 1540 and 1545UT

Strongish het, no or "near imaginary" audio (either undermodulated or ravaged by splatter)

1242 1359 1422 1503 1575 seemed to be Asian;
1017 seemed to be DU

best wishes,

Nick

Nick Hall-Patch
Victoria, BC
Canada

Haven't seen any IRCA replies on this Mark, but
N7DF recently walked back his comments a bit
after seeing quite a few of the other 160m
contestants saying how poor conditions had been.

My own comments that you quoted were from Sunday 
morning, traditionally a time when contests on 
160m are winding down, and people throw in the 
towel if it doesn't look like they'll add any 
more contacts to what they've already 
made.  Saturday morning here was a bit better 
than Sunday, but still not anywhere up to what 
one might expect from geomagnetic conditions.
Nick
At 05:23 2019-01-29, Mark Connelly via IRCA wrote:
I wasn't active but I'm very curious as to what 
everyone else noted over the weekend based on the reports below.
Mark Connelly, WA1ION
South Yarmouth, MA
Exhibit A
<<
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2019 16:03:56 +0000 (UTC)
From: N7DF <n7df@yahoo.com>
To: TopBand List <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Topband: really good conditions
Unbelievable signals in CQ160 this weekend..many 
stations 40 over on my FT1000 and several TX and 
AZ signals pegged the meter at 60 over

PJ2T was 35 over most of the time
lost my receiving antennas to storms in December and had to use cage only
still have right wrist in cast so have to hunt and pounce only QLF but had fun
73 Larry
>>
Exhibit B
<<
From: Nick Hall-Patch <nhp@ieee.org>
To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America
    <irca@hard-core-dx.com>
Subject: [IRCA] TPÂ  27 Jan Victoria version.
This morning might take the title for the season's worst...
pretty darn good audio (all of it understandable 
by a native speaker, at least briefly):
not by any means
Reasonable audio at  times during the period 
(much of it understandable by a native speaker, 
though often battling with splash or noise):
the above passing through

not so reasonable audio, occasional words or 
phrases in splash or noise could be understood by a native speaker:
not in the slightest
>>