Yep, it was a very well-attended event. I enjoyed both hanging out and rag chewing in various pubs (most of the time) as well as working a pileup later in the night of western stations on 3875.
There were many new AMers who said they had been listening to AM "all over the band" and decided to give it a try for the first time. It sounded like an AM hamfest convention. Perhaps 60% of the calls I've never heard before. Fabio performed flawlessly.
Later on at about 10:30PM Don/K4KYV was taking a break from 3875 and I offered to keep the freq warm for him. I called for west coast and stations who haven't worked east coast yet. Thought I'd give some of the weaker stations a chance to get in. There was a fast run of contacts for a good hour. The highlight of the event for me was when Jackko from Finland, OH1TX was there for the schedule on 3765 split 3870. Steve/HUZ and I both worked him. We tried several times to connect him with USA AMers on 3870 and 3875, but conditions were down and Jackko had to pass. Too bad.
The strangest event of the day was at about 2:30 PM when I called into the "Ladies" on 3885. I transmitted for about 60 seconds and then unkeyed. I heard nothing. There was a faint female voice in the noise, that's it. Turns out we had a big time solar flare. The band then became chaos as people called and called and then went outside looking at their antennas. I got fooled too....
Conditions slowly came back, as usual, but the band was squirrelly the whole day afterwards.
Still, there was enough activity to continuosly move around the 75M band (and other bands) and not talk with the same people twice. I noticed the regular ssb groups between 3860 and 3890 were gone most of the night on 75M.
Mission accomplished . It's well worth it to plan another event.
Tom - AM Special Event Station, K1J
