I've seen many times over the years, and I do mean many, where you spin the 
dial on 15 or 10 meters and hear nothing but one station. You assume he's 
local since it is just that one but then you pay attention and it's DX, and 
often great, so you work him. I think a lot of times people just assume the 
band's dead when it's not and someone has to try it. I can't tell you how 
many times I've run in to that over the years but it's more than once a 
year. Or, when I was on there every night talking locally, we'd check the 
band now and then to see what's going on and come back, all of a sudden, a 
DX station comes in and talks to us for a half hour or so, rest of the 
band's dead but he was scanning the band and ran in to us.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 11:58 PM
Subject: Band Conditions


> I've noticed the higher bands are staying open later into the night which 
> is
> typical of summer time conditions.  I'm often hearing on 20 meters, the
> Pacific and a few weaker Europeans and some loud, over the pole, Russian
> stations.  A smattering of stateside signals, too.  30 meters is also
> staying open passed midnight but not too many people have discovered it 
> yet.
> I always check 17 meters late at night at least once.  A few years ago, I
> just happen to be testing a 17 meter rotatable dipole and it was about
> midnight local time.  The whole CW band was crawling with Europeans and it
> would last from about 10 PM till 2 in the morning with signals S3 to S9
> plus.  It went on for several weeks before it died out.  It puts me of a
> mind of the story the guy told me that tutored me into my novice and 
> general
> tickets.  He said, back in the fifties, during the peak cycle, he was 
> tuning
> the bands and was running A M on 10 meters, of course, like everyone else
> was at the time.  It was normally after hours, he said, as he tuned 10
> meters and, of course, he confirmed, not one signal was heard from top to
> bottom on phone or CW.  So, just for fun, thinking he'd snag a local, ten
> meters used to be a local communications band sort of like 2 meters is now
> but before 10 meter FM repeaters.  He called CQ running about 30 to 40 
> watts
> of A M and a 20 over S9 Cuban signal answered him and they talked for 
> about
> 30 minutes.  So, I don't care if the band does sound dead, I'll call CQ 
> for
> a good ten minutes before giving up because you never know.  The first 
> time
> I got on 6 meters, I ran the Icom 502A I think it was called.  3 watts 
> side
> band output and CW.  I called CQ and worked everybody a hundred times over
> in the Denver area but nothing out of state.  One night, when I finished
> some work in my basement office, about 12:30 in the morning, I went to the
> rig, fired it up using my home brew 5 element 6 meter beam on a 12 foot 
> boom
> up 40 feet, and a W5 in Louisiana answered me with an S9 side band signal.
> He gave me an S9 report.  Another time, in the middle of the afternoon, 
> the
> band totally dead, I used my 3 watt rig on 6 meters, without a squelch
> control, and monitored the calling frequency.  It used to be 50.110 MHz at
> that time for side band.  I heard a very faint signal.  I figured it was a
> local.  Test, test.  He got a little stronger.  I still kept working at my
> other table.  Hello testing.  Louder.  I went over, and said, QRZed and 
> gave
> my call.  A little louder now, he said, Who was that?  I repeated my call.
> He answered me with a WB0 call sign.  Shoot, I thought, another dad blamed
> local who I ain't worked before.  Now his signal was way over s9 so I
> figured he was cranking his beam around here in Denver to peak up the
> signals.  He is saying, I'm in Missouri.  Where are you.  I said, man, you
> are 40 over s9 right now here in Denver.  He actually gave me a 40 over S9
> but then the signals began dropping just as quickly as they built up.  In 
> 30
> seconds, end to end, it was over.  Bouncing off a plain super high that I
> couldn't hear?  Bouncing off a satellite?  Reflecting off a tiny E cloud
> floating by miles overhead between Colorado and Missouri?  Beats me but it
> sure was fun.  I'm looking forward to a little 3 element 6 meter beam at 
> 40
> feet now and the Icom 7000 with a little more power.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX