Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 19:41:15 -0500
From: "'Geri' Kinzel, DK8KW" <DK8KW@compuserve.com>
Subject: LF: PSK31 Tests on Tuesday evening
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Message-ID: <200202051941_MC3-F0D2-9D6B@compuserve.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Disposition: inline
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Sender: <majordom@post.thorcom.com>

Hello Wolf, Jim, Andy, all the listeners, and the rest of the group,

>Earlier on there was '4-corner QSO' with G4JNT, DK8KW, M0BMU and myself
with 
>interesting propagation effects, possibly a result of the Aurora (which <

... indeed, a nice PSK31 QSO with interesting effects. Wolf and me are only
about 115 km apart but we were able to hear and read Jim's, M0BMU's PSK31
signals completely different. 

At the beginning of our QSO Jim's signal was about 5 dBµV/m (signal
strength about -103 dBu), perfectly readable, then it went down another 3
dB to below 2 dBµV/m (-106 dBu), at this point completely unreadable to
occasionally readable. During that time Jim's signal was relayed to me
through Wolf's cut and paste activity, who could read Jim almost perfectly.
At the end of our QSO, after about an hour, Jim's signal suddenly climbed
to 10 dBµV/m (-98 dBu)  and was perfectly readable. Noise level was around
-106 dBu all the time at a bandwidth of 100 Hz (which shows me that also a
PSK31 can not be copied perfectly if it is close to or below the noise
level at this bandwidth, I would guess that a normal CW signal would have
had a similar readability). 

I remember that this selective fading with completely different phases and
signal strengths was also observed between other stations that were only
100km or so apart. I don't know if this can be traced back to the aurora or
to other propagation effects, but it was interesting to observe.

Same as Wolf I was unable to read Andy's signals here, we might need to
check again in PSK08 or WOLF or a similar mode to see if we could pull the
signal out of the noise.

Thanks also for all the stations reporting reading our signals. 

Best 73

Geri, DK8KW (W1KW)