Dave Wilson, AC4IU, who lives near Fredericksburg, south of Washington DC,
reports to have seen DFC39, but rarely, and adds that he is not sure what
determines when he can hear that station of not. It should be noted that
Fredericksburg is well inland, far from the ocean.
Excellent. I feel that concentrating on this high ERP station will
provide a useful pattern. Once fixed stations can receive it with
some reliability (or at least predictability), preferably by ear, then
there is a good chance that a coastal portable expedition can detect
amateurs. It also gives something to work with, that is to measure
improvements in propagation and receiver/antenna performance.
When you hear nothing, you can't tell if you need another 3dB or
300!
The reason DCF39 was not mentioned in the Nags Head reports is that,
sadly, we did not look for it. Our mistake, but we were concentrating on
the narrow band between 137.600 and 137.900 where the 4 British amateur
stations were located. 73 Andre' N4ICK
Quite understood. Portable expeditions are by no means trivial and
you have to set your agenda in advance and concentrate on that. If
you had detected the amateur signals, that would have been
marvelous, but it looks like you need to set your sights a little lower
in order to determine just how far you are from succeeding. The bad
news is that conditions were exceptionally good that weekend as
CFH was strong well into daylight in the UK.
I am quite sure, however, that you learned useful lessons for next
time. With my LF portable expeditions to GW, I have got better and
better because each time I came away with a long list of things I
knew I had done wrong - it's true about learning from your mistakes.
An expedition only fails if you can't think of anything you would do
better next time.
It's pretty frustrating for us in Europe as we feel we would like to just
pop over with our own gear and hear for ourselves what the band is
like, as we might with a listening station a few hundred km away.
Perhaps you can put a few .WAV files onto the AMRAD website
after your next expedition so that we can hear and also analyse the
receiver output. It might help us to help you.
Anyway, your efforts are very much appreciated and we all look
forward to the day when the US (and Canada) has an LF allocation
in the licence. Then we can be the ones desperately looking in vain
at the noise on a DSP screen!
73
Mike, G3XDV (IO91VT)
http://www.dennison.demon.co.uk/activity.htm
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