You're also extremely fortunate to be living
on the west coast, however, where you have a *much* greater shot at
working the rare Asian and south pacific entities that are never even
a blip on my S-meter.

Uhm... you might want to reconsider this one. I also lived in Canada
(VA3GW) for eight years, so I know first hand the difference in
propagation. Of course, every part of the world has condx somewhere, but
at least on the East Coast you have free access to Europe almost all the
time, while EU signals are ancient history here on 10-15m, and on 17 and
lower they suffer from the auroral path attenuation, i.e. nothing heard.
Maybe no big deal for casual dxing,

Thing is, though, there are a Metric Sh*tload of european stations,
and frankly, bagging a G, F, I, EA/6/8, LZ, EU,EW, OZ,ON, etc are as
easy as pie with even marginal condx. Getting each of these confirmed
on all of the higher bands isn't too difficult, though admittedly it's
getting a little harder as cycle 23 goes into the crapper. There are
FAR fewer Pacific and south/southeast Asia entities active, however,
and from the Left Coast, you will work them with wires and stock power
easily when not even 5 elements and legal limit will rattle their cage
from the East Coast. By contrast, I've not worked a JA on any band in
2 years, with the exception of three on 15m during ARRL-DX.

I've not heard JT once since ARRL-DX last year (whom I thankfully
worked for my WAZ the very last day I was ever able to hear him).

I've not heard BY once since getting them on 15 in 2001. I've never
gotten XX9, VR2, XY, A5, 9N, V8, 9V and a whole host of entities from
those regions that with modest propagation I'm sure those in 6-land
can pick off even now.

but there is no way in hell anyone
from the left coast ever wins any contest over the East Coasters.

Yes, I can understand that contesting from any place other than the
East Coast must be incredibly difficult. I would venture to say that
the rules should be modified to either give 6/7 stations a better
fighting chance.

I like the weather much more than VE3, though...
Even NYC weather is better than Toronto. (ex/still VE3THX)

Go, Raptors.
Go Leafs Go




73 de Peter, W2IRT
(ex-AB2NZ, VE3THX)

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