|
Dear LF Group,
We had a reasonably successful weekend at the
RSGB HFC on the LF front - thanks to all those who listened for/worked MB2HFC on
136kHz, and who came to the talks and visited the station.
The LF station was set up after torrential rain on
Friday afternoon, with the TX antenna supplied by G3KAU and the Crawley club,
and the TX and RXs from M0BMU. I had only finished the 1kW TX a couple of days
before, and so this was its first real test, which fortunately it passed well.
We were able to get out a decent transmit signal almost straight away, but
receive was another matter, with very high local QRM levels on the TX antenna
(as expected). By Saturday morning, an FT1000 at the Crawley club shack was
available via the internet and Ham Radio Deluxe software for remote LF reception
at the convention. This worked quite well, and several stations were worked
through it, but it was an odd experience for the operators; hearing your own
signal with about 1/2 second delay was totally confusing! The audio was very
"digital" sounding, but obviously a big improvement on local
reception.
By Saturday afternoon, we had set up a receiving
loop antenna, on the end of about 120m of coax in an electrically quieter spot
(this was out at the back of the hotel by the bins, on a patch of rough ground,
oddly enough under some high voltage power lines!) This gave really quite
good local reception, but unfortunately the CW callers seemed to have dried up
by that time. We did work a number of stations in slow CW, until I got chucked
out of the LF operating area at about 7pm, so that it could be locked up (I
suppose they were worried I could have raided the RSGB book stand). A few
more stations were worked on Sunday. The operators were mainly Derek G3GRO and
myself. The station generated quite a lot of interest from passers
by.
I gave two talks on LF, one on receiving, the other
on transmitting, so there was a strong LF component in the technical sessions.
With this, and setting up and operating the LF station, it was quite a busy
weekend. Next year we should know exactly where to set up the antennas in
advance, so things should go more smoothly!
Cheers, Jim Moritz
73 de M0BMU
|
