Dear LF Group,
Sent CQ calls on 73kHz from about 1910 to about 2250 last
night; saw signals from G3LDO and G4GVC while monitoring
73kHz, but no replies on 136kHz - only signal seen was DFCW
from G3AQC. The level of QRN seemed quite high.
I think the idea of having seperate frequencies for each station on
the band is a good one - I would go along with G3LDO about
'channel spacing' - maintaining my VFO to within +/-5Hz is fairly
easy, which would be OK for 10Hz spacing, but not for 5Hz. I will
allocate myself 71.81 for the time being, unless there is any
reason to avoid this frequency?
As far as switching antennas goes, I am using a seperate antenna
for receive when working cross-band - this avoids problems with
high-voltage switching. The RX antenna is a vertical of about 5m
fixed to the side of the house, tuned with a small pot core inductor
and variable capacitor. At the moment it is switched out by a relay
on transmit, but I plan to add some additional high pass filtering so I
can monitor 136 continuously while transmitting on 73. The
seperate antenna seems more prone to picking up mains noise, but
most of the time the noise floor seems to be QRN or Loran
sidebands.
I probably won't be available tonight, but should be QRV tomorrow
morning for cross - band QSO's.
Cheers, Jim Moritz
73 de M0BMU
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