Hi Bill,
I was really on top of it this time and listened to Soldersmoke 115 yesterday evening, the same day I got it from the Internet. I was intrigued by your description of the aurora in 1972. I don’t recall that one. By then we were in Oregon. We have had some strong ones down this way, but missed them visually because of cloud cover, a common problem in Oregon. But I have fond memories of the first and most spectacular show I ever did see. This happened when I was trying to go on the air in eastern Washington. I knew that I had put something in my log about it, so last night I pulled my log books of that day and started looking. It took a while, but it was there. QTH at the time was Richland, WA, which is in the SE corner of the state, right on the Columbia River. The station is the first B&W photo on my web site.
I see in my log that on 9/12 of 1957 I had been active. I called a ZL at 1:40 AM on 20M CW. (All times are Pacific time. Probably daylight time.) Then I had worked w2gqn in NJ at 18:11. But the band became quite noisy after that. I have log entries for September 13th, ’57, starting just after midnight:
00:49. called KG6AAY. No luck.
00:56. called ZL2AHA. Again, no luck.
No more entries until 16:25 when I worked a local friend, Wn7JII on 7 mc.
Yea, I know; the frequencies were in mc back then.
Thanks for stirring up some really fun memories.
73, Wes
w7zoi