Sad to report, I heard no ham transmissions on Sunday, despite using my Tx
loop (2 turns, each about 130 metres in circumference) as a receiving
antenna beaming E-W. The commercial stations were booming in and I was well
clear of Rugby. I operated the beacon before the Convention station was
scheduled to go on air and then went into listening mode for about an hour
before starting the beacon again until 11 am when I switched over to
receive. I fully expected to receive Lec and Derek at 11 am but I listened
for them from 11 to 11.20 and heard nothing, so I gave up and switched on
the beacon for the rest of the day (frequency approx 71.9).
I had reverted to the double loop configuration a few days beforehand and
found that the local signal strength (about 2 miles away) was up by a
factor of approximately 4 on the single loop. A year or so ago, running on
slightly lower power, this would easily reach a few hundred kilometres so
the situation is extremely puzzling.
Unfortunately my computer could not download the file that Dave attatched
to his email so I do not know how others fared or whether or not any one
received my transmissions. I shall be very glad to receive a general
report on the situation in plain text if anyone can oblige.
It is sad if 73 has to end this way. It has always been a
challenge, but much more so this weekend and we still have much to learn.
Incidentally I am recently troubled by local QRM, the second
harmonic of a very poweful carrier on approx 35.8 MHz. As yet I haven't
been able to track it down, - any ideas?
73,
Roger, G2AJV.
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