Hello Ken, LF,

Yes, your signal was getting out, at least as far as Shetland and to Dave
G3YXM at his holiday QTH in Ullapool too.

500kHz, I've discovered, is greatly limited by local noise levels,
especially in urban areas.

I also heard G3XIZ calling CQ last night and despite good, if fading,
signals Chris sent that he could just detect my signals on his "Argo"
screen, and could I try QRSS. Not having a PC hooked up to do it properly
I had to send my callsign in QRSS by hand - it was tricky to avoid getting
lost in the dots and dashes! Noise again was his limitation.

What do you use for receive, antenna/receiver/IF and audio fiters/pre-amp
etc?

Can you hear the QRSS/CW ident of DI2AM on ~505.2 at night?

Finbar on 501.318 - check my grabber first to make sure he's on the air, 
use his signal as a target to aim for. Nothing's ever very strong on this
band, unless you have locals nearby, but it's amazing what sort of weak
signals you can get used to after a while.

It's in situations like yours (and others setting up receive systems) that
demonstrate the value of a regular beacon. Others will say that you should
be able to do do without these niceties and just get on the air and work
people, optimising as you go, but there's no guarantee that suitable QSO
partners will be available at the right time. An amateur run beacon is at
least a known signal source.

Hope you hear something soon.

Cheers,

John


On Mon, October 27, 2008 23:31, Ken wrote:
> Hello John.
>  Thanks for your report, it looks as if my 90mW is reaching you ok, on the
> receive side I could not hear any signal on the band with or without the
> RX pre-amp in circuit. So will still need a local signal to check the RX
> with. Hope be able to work you soon.
>
> 73
>
> Ken   M0KHW
>
> IO91TV