Greetings,

Congratulations Peter and Jack!

Well, the King of Topband now rules 136, too.  Last night Jack was the
loudest amateur signal (out of a total of, um, five) that I've seen so
far here in central Pennsylvania.  When CFH wakes up again I should be
able to give a reasonable idea of how far down 'the beacon' is on 'the
beacon'.

       73,        Steve        W3EEE


James Moritz wrote:

Dear LF group,

Congratulations to Jack and Peter on last night's reception of
VE1ZZ's signals.

Funnily enough, I was using DL4YHF's excellent Spectrum Lab
software to record spectrograms of 136.5kHz last night - but
unfortunately only after 0100! Oh, well. There was actually a trace
around 0300 or 0400, on about the right frequency, drifting a few
hertz low, but it had nothing to identify it as an amateur station.

If G3LDO's info about VE1ZZ's station is correct, Jack's ERP is
about 50W (30W radiated power). This is pretty spectacular - not
far below the ERP obtained during the Puckeridge "high power"
operation. It would put VE1ZZ only about 30dB down on the CFH
signal. Since the SNR on CFH in typical CW bandwidths often
exceeds 30dB during the course of a night, audible copy should be
quite easy, provided one of Jack's transmissions coincides with
good propagation.

Of course, with the European 1W ERP limit, both regulatory and
practical, 2-way communication might be a way off yet, but it's
getting closer...

After tomorrow, I won't have access to E-mail due to the holidays
until about January 2nd. in the mean time -

A very Happy Christmas to all on the LF reflector, and best wishes
for 2001!

Cheers, Jim Moritz
73 de M0BMU