Paul,

For your interest, I believe you live at about the same latitude as Sydney, 
Nova Scotia.
There is an NDB on 263 kHz, which makes it all year round here.

At the moment the grey line is very wide and I gather that helped a lot to 
reach Germany.
It could very well be that propagation at this time of the year is better than 
in Winter!

73,
Roelof, pa0rdt