Phil,

Those "common" caribiean stations you were hearing were in fact new DXCC 
countries.  While I haven't followed this very closely, this past 
weekend the Dutch possessions in the carribien were redone   into new 
entities.

Sunday afternoon they were all over 20 meters giving me fits as I tried 
to work some contacts in the PA QSO party.

73, Steve KW3A



On 10/14/2010 12:27 AM, Phil Scovell wrote:
> For awhile, these last few nights, I was beginning to think I was going =
> to have to see if my G5RV had fallen down off the tower due to the =
> horribly weak and poor 75 meter band conditions.  Then tonight, =
> conditions have been slightly better and I heard various guys =
> complaining about how poor 75 meters has been of late.  I also noticed =
> in the last couple of days, huge CW pile ups on 20 and 30 and 40 meters. =
>   The quote rare DX station unquote was down 1 or 2 KHz from the huge, I =
> mean very big, pile ups so naturally, after ringing up 312 countries =
> worked over the years, I figured it had to be something really worth the =
> trouble to work.  Tuning down below the pile, I would find common old =
> every day Caribbean stations that had generated pile ups so big, they =
> had to run split frequency to get everybody off their transmit =
> frequency.  I honestly don't think the bands have been as bad as they =
> sound.  People just aren't on the air as much because they are thinking =
> the bands are dead when they tune through an individual band.  At any =
> rate, 75 meters, for sure, has been weak the last few nights and it =
> isn't my antenna fortunately.  Even the Texas boys on certain round =
> table frequencies I check and listen to have been down in the mud when =
> normally they run 20 and 30 over nine.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX