Wow!  I finally worked Chak JT1CO for my last Zone on 160!  I cannot imagine how many hours I've spent listening for him!  Charlanne will attest to that, hi!  She gets the Champagne tonight... ;-)  Chak peaked 559 here about 1130 UTC via long path on my 205 degree Beverage, and was inaudible on any others.  Chak later verified that he was receiving using his SE Beverage (long path follows that direction for stations at the sunset end of the path).

Since I first began looking for Chak in 2001, I expected this QSO to be via long path but was beginning to think it might be via skew to the NW since I most recently heard Chak on that path.  His direct bearing of 355 degrees is almost directly over the Magnetic North Pole from here.  This means the signal would have to traverse both portions of the Auroral donut for short path which is extremely unlikely with the solar flux levels we have now and with any sort of geomagnetic disturbance (Kp 3 at 1200 UTC today).  Today my sunrise was 1218 and Chak's sunset was 0953, so we had nearly 2.5 hours of common darkness and the QSO came at 65% between his sunset and my sunrise.  This is a little on the long side compared to past LP QSO's which average 48% (click here for info I posted on the Topband reflector in 2002).  Another interesting comparison is to look at my 1987 QSO with UA9UCO from W0ZV in Colorado (click here)...the relative geography is almost identical (except for the relative position of Magnetic North from Colorado)!

This path is undoubtedly the most difficult path from the East Coast due to being exactly on the other side of the Magnetic North Pole.  Thanks Chak for your patience and perseverance!!!!!  (And also very special thanks to Ken K4ZW who made not one but two trips to Mongolia to help Chak install his Titanex vertical and Beverages!!)