The effect I have increasingly observed on EH over the past year began showing up on other beacons as well over the winter. This set of captures from January 13 will look familiar to LOWDOWN readers:
Today, for the first time, I saw signs of it trying to happen to SIW slant mode! It doesn't show up very strongly here, but the uncharacteristic raggedness of the trace resolves into two barely separated traces in some captures, the lower of which is apparently more affected by fading than the main signal. Earlier in the afternoon, and again right at sunset, the signal was its usual clean self.
Overall, it was a fairly good day for HiFERs. I saw or heard USC, the SIWs, EH/HEE, 7P, NC, MTI, PBJ, and GNK. Level fluctuations were very wide on MTI, PBJ, and GNK...even more so than the watering hole stations. Often made it hard to get more than a letter or two at a time on the CW beacons, and PBJ's long characters tended to be broken and hard to recognize at times.
John