Isn't it funny how it seems like the band noise drops when signals are
flurishing on any given band.  Let the band go dead and one or two weak
signals leak through, and the noise is a pain in the butt.  When I lived in
western Colorado, I had a house in the new sub division of this little town
up above the town itself.  All cables were buried.  Zero noise on every
freaking band.  I had a clear view, for what that is worth when you are
blind, directly east to the mountains for about 20 miles.  To the west, it
was flat for hundreds of yards due to an open field.  My 80 and 40 meter
inverted vees worked stuff I never have even heard here in Denver with all
the city man made noises.  I had a vertical on the ground in my backyard
over there, too, and on 40 meters, it blew holes through the west coast when
working DX on 40 meters.  I was totally amazed.  The bands were hot back
then, though, and that sure made a big difference but that zero line noise
was amazing.  I have a friend who went out for a 160 meter contest and they
put up a hot air balloon with 130 foot wires for radials and a ground plane
on 160 meters and sailed it up to about 120 feet.  My friend told me that
one night, he tuned down around the 150 to 500 KHZ band and he heard VOR
signals he had never heard before.  Oh, I forgot to mention.  They were 13
miles from the nearest power lines and used a quiet generator to power their
160 meter station.

Phil.
K0NX