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The big question will be, what does the sun have in store for this Topband test? The signs from ARRL CW show that there could be a good bit of trans-Atlantic and Pacific DX.
"The opening to Europe on 160 meters was fantastic on both nights," said Stephen Werner AG4W on 3830, who made 108 QSO's and had 65 mults on Topband.
"A pleasant surprise to have score turn out this well, considering the solar condx this week," reported George Taft W8UVZ on 3830, reporting that he managed to find 76 mults from Michigan.
"I probably spent too much time on 160 but had a ball doing it," said Fred Laun K3ZO, who made 114 QSO's and 53 multipliers on 160 in the ARRL DX CW.
"Both mornings we experienced good openings to Japan and on Saturday evening the band was wide open to Europe," said Bill KV0Q, who made 200 Q's and found 72 mults.
Down in the Carribean, John Barcroft K6AM was at ZF2AM, where he finished second in last year's CQ 160 SSB - he made 463 contacts and 59 mults.
"Now its on to the CQWW 160 SSB again," Barcroft wrote on 3830.
Over in Europe, the reports indicated somewhat noisy band conditions, but competitors squeezed out what they could on Topband.
"First night was mostly restricted to the Eastern Seaboard and mid-west but there was a short opening to some western states on Sunday morning," reported Peter G3LET, who operated as M5O in ARRL CW.
"Topband was almost open on both nights," wrote Arunas LY2IJ on 3830.
One multiplier that many will be looking for is the District of Columbia, where Eric Rosenberg W3DQ tried to work out the kinks at this station with a Multi-Single effort in ARRL CW.
His team managed to root out 64 QSO's and 46 mults on Topband, even through all of the city noise that dominates his big city QTH.
"We set a record this year by working 10 stations on all six bands -- all but one in the Caribbean," said Rosenberg.
In fact, if you look at the CQ 160 SSB records, you will see the World multi-op mark hasn't changed since 1999 (3V8BB), and the World Single-Op mark has been the same since 2005 (4L5A @D4B).
The USA record book has been more recently updated, as Jerry Rosalius WB9Z grabbed the top mark in the USA back in 2009; that was also the year that Team WE3C set a new record in Multi-Op.
The USA Single Op Low Power record remains in the hands of N0FW, who set that in 2004.
The CQ WW 160 SSB Contest begins at 2200z on Friday 25 February and ends at 2200z on Sunday 28 February.
HG10P (HA3MY) - Single Op Low Power
E77DX - Assisted
HA8BE - Single Op QRP
CR2X - Multi-Operator
The top single operator score is in the hands of Valery Komarov RD3A, who operated EF8M in the Canary Islands to 2.77 million points.
While that is a big score, it's still short of the record held by Al 4L5A.
The low power leader is in the Carribean as Al Velez WP3C has the top claimed score so far with 726k.
The leading claimed Assisted score among single operators comes from ER4A, which was operated by RA4LW to 1.29 million points.
The multi-op category also is led by Russians, as the team of RA3AUU and RW4WR took P33W on Cyprus to 2.14 million points.
The top scores from the US & Canada include VY2NU's effort from VY2ZM in the Single Operator High Power category, as Mladen Bogdanov leads all North American ops with 2.1 million points, second in the world behind EF8M.
Bogdanov operated from the QTH of Jeff Briggs VY2ZM. Meanwhile, Briggs' brother Peter K3ZM has the top USA single op score at 1.23 million points.
The USA low power leader is David Jorgenson WD5COV, who operated his well-equipped topband station in New Mexico to 432k. Chas Fulp K3WW is the Assisted leader in the US.
On the Multi-Op side, the USA top claimed score is from Team K1LZ.
