One MORE Good Night on EME

Well, the degradation was -1.8 to -1.9 dB last night and I thought I would like to see how that affected my EME activities.  It did seem to have an effect but did not stop me from making 16 EME QSO's between 0510 and 1130 GMT.  That meant I did not get INTO bed until just after 7 a.m.  I need for the moon to be good during my daytime once in awhile so that the DX has to stay up all night!

Below you can see a screenshot of my log covering last night and a couple of days before.  The Green Highlight on G8BCG indicates that I sent him a paper QSL.  Click on any image to see it larger.

I looked for TF3T a couple of times while he was calling CQ but I saw nothing.  I did copy LU7FA quite well and called him several times but all I got was a single "QRZ" from him.  That would complete my Worked All Continents (WAC) by giving me South America so I'll keep watching for him.

During most of the night, a lot of the stations I worked or tried to work would say they were copying me but I did not copy them.  Or, the reports I got were several dB better than those I gave by as much as 12 dB.  This one-way propagation can be frustrating for sure.  Like when I ran with SINGLE yagi station OK1TEH for more than 1/2 hour and I copied him FOUR times as strong as -22 dB:

JT65B 093600 1 -27 dB 3.2 s -194 Hz 3 W Freq 1076 Hz > W8TN OK1TEH JO70
094800  0  -27  3.2 -205  2 *      W8TN OK1TEH JO70          0  10
JT65B 095000 2 -22 dB 3.2 s -206 Hz 10 W Freq 1064 Hz > W8TN OK1TEH JO70
100000  2  -27  3.3 -215  4 *      W8TN OK1TEH JO70          0  10

But, he got zippo from me.  He said he was seeing my trace but did not get it to decode. He told me he had trouble with "city noise" at low elevations.

At times I did feel like I was rare DX with all the traces I could see from stations answering my CQ's:

Even with the higher degradation, it turned out to be a productive night on the moon in terms of making Initials and Grids but no new DXCC's happened.  Last night I raised my EME totals by 16 more QSO's, 16 more Initials, and 10 New Grids to:

116 EME QSO's, 111 Initials, 95 Grids, 21 States, & 31 DXCC's

Amazingly I have averaged 2.9 QSO's per Day since I got on the moon 40 days ago!  Before I got operational, I would have bet big money that would not be possible.  Heck, I didn't even know there were as many stations active on 2-M EME as there seem to be.  I keep expecting to "work out" all those who want to work me but right now, this is so much FUN!

At MR (MoonRise) tonight the DGR (Degradation) is 3.0 dB and continues to rise for the next week.  It doesn't look reasonable again until Christmas.  So, I guess it's time to get caught up on other things for the next two weeks. How will I stand it by not being able to make more EME QSO's?