Last night was our first full night on Topband. We know that our signal is strong but we are having a hard time to dig callsigns out of the noise.

We now have a few receive antennas wich can be used either seperate or combined. The biggest problem is that signals are very very weak and just below the noise level. Most of the time we have to listen for a minute or two and wait untill a callsign pops up over the noise. We can hear a lot of stations calling but we just can not copy any of the callers. It might look silly that while we have hundreds of callers we start CQ’ing again but this is to get a starting point when to listen and get into the right sequence with the pile up. This works both ways i guess, when we stop CQ’ing its your turn to send your callsign at a moderate speed.(23/25 wpm) If you hear us comming back to you do not repeat your callsign, just send some RRRR and your report. It might take a few minutes to complete the QSO so hang in there. We plan to be on the band every evening/night to avoid missing that rare good opening (if there will be any).

Hope to see you soon in our Topband log.