I have been using Opera on 136kHz for about a week now. My initial
findings are as follows:
Around 12 stations have reported on my signals, in G, GW, F, DL, and
PA.
No DX reports have been receved, although well-equipped stations in
UA and W have been active.
I have received Russian stations as far as 3500km away.
Several stations are active who are not visible on this group.
The main benefits of Opera require an Internet connection.
The slower Opera32 is more effective than Opera8, which is to be
expected.
It is much easier to run overnight tests than with QRSS, because
effectively every receiving station has a 'grabber'.
It is easy to run both transmit and receive tests over the same
night.
The software changes are now further apart (every few days, instead
of daily) and new versions are no longer incompatilble with the
previous ones.
Although two stations can independently report on each other's
signals, a QSO mode would be a really useful addition.
My conclusion is that Opera seems to be a very useful propagation
research tool, and could be a good communications mode.
Is it better than QRSS? Well, it is a useful way to make a two-way
QSO during periods of good conditions that are too short to support a
QRSS30-60 contact. G4WGT and VO1NA have already demonstrated this.
However, I have not yet seen any evidence that it can beat QRSS at
the most marginal level. It could easily replace most QRSS3 contacts
when signals are good.
I can see my call on QRSS grabbers in TF, 4X, UA, VE and W quite
often and would have expected some Opera reports from these
distances. One issue might be that all stations are in the same
narrow sub-band, which works fine on HF with very short ground wave,
but may be inappropriate for LF where huge local signals compete with
marginal DX. This was a problem with QRSS DX, which is why we now
operate split frequency.
I shall continue using Opera, but willl also use QRSS for DX tests.
73 de Mike, G3XDV
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