Hi All,
I got the balloons up again on Saturday morning and thus extended my 12
m vertical into a 20 m vertical for 136 kHz.
At 06:42 UTC, I had a fine QSO with Harry PA0LQ (RST 559 both ways). At
07:40, club station DF0WD (768 km) answered my CQ call and we made the
first DL/GW 2-way QSO on 136 kHz (I sent RST 449, received 349).
DF0WD, operated by Wolf DL4YHF, was running 20 W to a 200 m wire, 17 m
high ("tied to the light-masts of a football field").
In a subsequent Email, Wolf described his RX antenna as a small bundle
of ferrite rods and said "I have to turn that antenna by hand to get
minimum QRM (not maximum field-strength of the received signal!)."
The weather got windy later on, so I took the experimental vertical
down. On the loop I had a QSO with Ron G6RO (253 km, 549 both ways) and
in the afternoon I worked Bob G8RW (192 km) for a new one (I sent RST
459, received 539).
On Sunday, I got the balloons up again to work Harry PA0LQ at 07:08 UTC
(549 both ways).
With a large number of jobs to do around the house at weekends, I expect
to be most active on Saturdays and Sundays between 06:30 and 08:00
(local time). This is also when the weather conditions are most likely
to be favourable for using my balloon-supported vertical.
Regards to all,
Steve GW4ALG
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