I got home today and rushed to the shack. At about 15.30 utc I heard FT5GA on 15m CW. Good signal! Only drawback: they were working ‘NA NA NA’ again. I could hear quite some NA in the pile up so I tried 15m myself. Got called by a Texan W5 and a TI8. Both were way weaker than what I heard in the Glorioso pile up so again good propagation is overruled by poor activity.
This evening I tried 17m again. First I worked a few East coasters but much to my surprise I worked as far as Colorado and Arizona. Cherry on the cake were a handful of W6 stations. The original W6 flavor from the Golden State of California. Super! The strongest signal was W6OAR whom I also worked on 30m last week. Today on 17m he was S7 with QSB dips to S5 and peaks to S9. I can’t find any information about his setup but the signal speaks for itself.
I think this small increase in SFI from 69 to 76 could make a big difference. At least I hope so. If not, there’s always 30m!