Got back around 1130 local and got set up on 6m, bands was just opening up. East Coast had a great EU opening and worked a few new grids. This opening went on for hours, and signals were pretty good - but there was one major problem. The waves of European DX coming into the eastern third of the US. I can understand why they would focus on that, I know I would have. I did make a few contacts and worked three new grids.
After around 45 minutes of seeing that I had "reasonable" signals to the east coast, but not a single reply to CQ's or even direct calls. I decided to see if 10m had Es - and yes, yes it did. And I profited greatly from it.
I started out with my 10m Digital WAS totals at 30 states worked, with 28 of them confirmed. When the band finally closed around 1900 local on 10m, my total now is 43 states worked and 38 confirmed! What was a poor showing on 10m digital is now pretty reasonable IMHO. I worked the following:
IN - CONFIRMED
KY
TX - CONFIRMED
WI - CONFIRMED
WV - CONFIRMED
The last three new ones - KY, MI, & ND - all are LotW members, so I hope that I will get them soon. The other 2 states - IA & UT - in the worked but unconfirmed column are older contacts, so they will need to be reworked. I did hear an IA station today but wasn't able to snag it. I will definitely spend more time during the day on 10m looking for another fantastic Es opening.
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