The bands have been incredible late at night recently. I had very little time to participate in ARRL DX CW this past weekend since I had several big exams to study for, but I called CQ on 20m around 08z Sunday morning just to see what would happen, and to my memory that is the best signal I have ever put into Europe. I was seeing numerous EU RBN hits coming in in the 30, 40, and even 50db range. I was even louder than K1LZ and K3LR into parts of Europe, and I am only running 100w and a wire! I must have hit the sweet spots in terms of propagation.
The pileup that ensued within seconds of my first CQ was unlike anything I have ever experienced from my lowly QTH. I knew the band was good when a SP running 5w called in with a strong signal. I was vastly unprepared for the unexpected pileup. Since I did not have N1MM keying set up at the moment, I ran the pileup by typing in everything I needed to send by hand into the CWX window in SmartSDR, quickly switching over to my logbook to log the QSO while the other station was TXing. It was rather stressful, but also incredibly fun to feel like a big gun for once. I do not believe I have experienced anything like that before. 40m was also unusually good around the same time too with more massive RBN hits even though it was after EU sunrise.
Also, I was hearing V85RH with a truly incredible signal on both 20m and 15m CW (and even copied him on 10m), but he also produced a truly incredible pileup that I was unable to break, unfortunately.
73
Mason - KK4SII