Almost Halloween

It's almost Halloween!

This past Friday & Saturday, I was planning to post a message regarding conditions: The bands are skipping out long really early. If you're a listener, plan to check 4000-4100 kHz tonight and tomorrow night because after dark, the signals on 43m will be skipping off most of the continent.

What happened a couple of Halloweens ago, nearly all of the activity occurred between about 2100 and 0000 UTC, with most stations on during the latter hour or two. Makes for tough listening when seven stations are on at the same time! I don't think that all of the stations will be caught off guard this time.

I'm not sure if any other bands will be used or not, but 3400-3500 kHz was an old, lightly used alternate frequency range for pirates in the past. Halloween meant activity for some AM pirates years ago, so maybe someone will show up on 1710 or 1720 kHz late at night.

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Yesterday, I was listening to Radio Underground on the Twente receiver on 3915.2 kHz. I always enjoy listening to Steve Underground on the air because he talks at length about whatever comes to mind. To say that his broadcasts are calm and laid back might be an understatement. Yesterday, a song ended and there was a long portion of dead air. Maybe three minutes or so? Enough that I checked back onto the Twente screen to see if the carrier was still there. It was. Steve came back on and said “Hello? Sorry about that. I was making a cup of tea.” And then he resumed talking about chat room comments and e-mails. Makes me think of the how the real WHYP would broadcast while James Brownyard was mowing the lawn--except I think the dead air was much, much longer.