On the 10th of March I received an e-mail from Alan Melia saying that
Brian Rogerson, CT1DRP, was in a position to receive 73kHz signals;
although all he had heard to that date was Rugby. Brian was keen to
try to receive amateur signals on this band before it was withdrawn
(due for the end of June 2000 at the time).
After an initial exchange of e-mails I agreed to transmit QRSS
signals on 71.8kHz but the results were negative.
I then asked Brian to send me a .JPG of his Spectrogram screen. The
display was a mess with masses of electrical QRM.
In a series of e-mail exchanges I passed to Brian the collective LF
group wisdom (G4GVC et al) for improving the receive system. This
included improving the antenna resonating and matching and extending
the ground system. The e-mails received from Brian showed intelligent
response to the advice and the .JPG images continuing improvement in results.
On the 5th of April I received an e-mail from Brian, with an attached
.JPG, saying "was this you".
It certainly was, although only readability 'T'; more recognizable
from the frequency characteristics on keying than the data!
On the 10th of April I received a further .JPG from Brian showing my
the 72kHz side of my cross-band QSO with I5TGC, this time readability 'O'.
The reason for describing this saga in detail is to show the value of
liaison for propagating LF experience, particularly if you are
trying to achieve a long distance contact over over a path whose
characteristics are not well known. When you realise that Brian had
not received any amateur signal until the 5th of April, to receive a
30mW signal over 1200km as his first received amateur signal was
quite an achievement.
Could not such a similar procedure be used for the transatlantic path?
--
Regards, Peter, G3LDO
<[email protected]>
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