Hi Markus, we know from my previous mole that the Hughes transmitter at CFH
is capable of 20kW ERP. The problem is that the nightime level is well down
here, on "normal" conditions. This is not unusual. When there is daylight
reception it usually indicates that we are still in the "recovery period"
after a geomag storm. Even Brian who has almost a complete water path only
saw CFH peeping above the noise in daytime normally a couple of years ago.

One thought is that the station is actually transmitting a "sub-carrier" of
one of its multi-channel. So I have no idea what power is actually going
into that it maybe that it is not the full 25kW (aerial claimed 80%
efficient). hence a check from someone close would be useful. John may be
just too far away as he is well within the 1st hop skywave zone.
Unfortunately my "mole" is long gone and may in fact be involved with CKN on
the west coast, but I have had no emails since he moved away. My belief from
previous discussions was the TX power goes into whatever mod is applied, and
the station is not normally run below its rated output.

My own measurements recently have showed a signal that is some 10 to 15dB
below what I would expect at night.....but I need to check the calibration
of my aerial as I have suffered some damage and lost a bit of top-load, from
the look of the tuning. This does not really have too much effect on the
"effective height" so I am hoping the measurements are OK.

Cheers de Alan G3NYK
alan.melia(at)btinternet.com