My frequency of visits to this NG is down to a couple of times per week from
daily.

I've been spending the summer nights with the old standbys of RN and BBC-WS,
with Radio Australia in the mornings. We had lots of northern lights last
night and RA wasn't its usual clear signal this a.m. I've never been
completely clear on the relationship. Sometimes it seems to disrupt N-S
signals and leaves E-W untouched. I was picking up home improvement advice
from somewhere east (sounded American) on 570 MW at ~ 1100 UTC , they
started playing music when an ad was expected and the dog wanted out, so
never did pin it down. I've been getting some good MW dx at night,
including KSL Salt Lake City, Vancouver and Seatle, St Louis. I think I
should be able to get Chicago and Minneapolis if I looked for them. I
haven't typically chased MW, but occasionally it's interesting to spin the
dial.

Telamon wrote:

The signal to noise level has been very high the past few weeks but
hopefully it will settle down now that we are almost in the back to
school season.

The regulars might want to reassess responding to the Trolling faction
as it has, in my opinion, suppressed any new responsible people joining
the news group. The number of posts of new people asking where else can
they go for SW radio information and not hearing from them again should
be a clue that the growth in new responsible posters has not increased
but the trolling faction has certainly increased.

Lately the news group has even descended to the pathetic point of
threatening bodily harm over Usenet.

I'm not sure the news group can recover to even the appearance of on
topic discourse as the Trolling faction appears to have reached
critical mass. In other words there is enough Trolling idiots carrying
on amongst themselves that this could be an indefinite state of affairs
in the news group even if all the regular on topic posters were to
ignore them, which they don't.

Statistically the news group has moved from about 1/3 off topic to
about 1/2 and now for the last few weeks about 2/3 of posts are off
topic but that's not all. The usual political ranting has turned more
and more toward disgusting sexual innuendo, racism, threats and really
nasty flaming.

I find it psychologically interesting that people, which otherwise have
an interest in the short wave radio would want the news group to
deteriorate to this level.

I rationally can't expect that NEW people or the thin skinned would
want to post here if the wide majority of posts are flaming,
threatening, foul and off topic. I figure that many of the people
that lurk here for information have also left.