The band was in great shape tonight, at least on the east coast. I was working stations all over the place. I had a websdr out in california pulled up on my laptop,
http://69.27.184.62:8901/ and with the exception of one of the guys (I talked to him before I had heard mention in another qso about being able to hear east coast stuff in CA) was able to hear everyone I had talked to on the receiver out there, including myself as well, which is pretty good considering I was only running 30 watts out of an FT-901 into a 20 foot high dipole. The best one besides Bob was Jason, W4PBS who was on a Valiant with just a D104 and was perfect copy on the CA receiver. I believe he said he had just started a few mods on it, but the audio was just right to cut through the static to be heard (which wasn't too bad to begin with, the band was fairly quiet). Most of the stations I was talking to (with the exception of Bob) were running anything from 25 to 150ish watts, somethings into some marginal antenna setups. I was on from just after 8 PM EST for a little bit while the band was changing around and then had gotten back on from just after 9:30 to just after 11:00 (0230 to 0400 UTC) and that's when the band had finally settled down. As Bob and I were discussing, the band was both long and short at the same time, which makes for some great conditions and is something that only happens maybe two or three times a year.