Mal,
As always, you paint a negative view of life on LF.
You may be right about LF activity levels, but it is for us all to encourage others, not put them off, and there is a place for CW, WSPR, QRSS and ROS etc on the LF bands.
Experimenting on MF, LF and VLF, albeit very simply, has been a wonderful learning experience for me and the good old days are still very much here with plenty to explore and discover.
Be happy - life is too short to be always miserable!
73s
Roger G3XBM
On 14 November 2010 14:08, mal hamilton <[email protected]> wrote:
Jay
Another point which is different from some years
back.
The numbers are not there anymore, and what does
exist is spread across the bands 9, 137, 500 Kcs for example 2 ops active on 9
kcs at times, 3 or 4 on 137 kcs and 500 kcs hardly used, only heard 2 stns today
testing and went away. Then there is mode diversity dividing the acty
between WSPR and CW
and most SWL'S are not interested in
WSPR.
The good days on the lower frequencies are gone,
definitely not attracting new comers, the numbers speak for
themselves.
I must say the other mf band 160 metres is vy
active world wide with CW acty
73 de mal/g3kev
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 12:17
PM
Subject: Re: LF: Eu QRSS freq....
Markus, Group
Since my name was mentioned I'll make a quick
post.
We may have a chicken and egg situation here. Up
until several years ago I routinely monitored and reported on EU
activity on LF ... that is until EU stations moved en masse to the US T/A
window. It is simply impossible to receive weak signals from EU while BIG
US stations are on the air. One is reduced to looking for crumbs
of weak signals between long callsigns strings. Worse yet, set up
for overnight captures because no US stations are active only to wake up to a
screen full of US stations that got a late start. I gave
up.
Now there's talk of merging the EU and US
500 kHz WSPR windows. Providing spots last winter, especially for
low power EU stations, was an interesting and challenging pursuit. But it
won't be if the majority of WSPR time slots are clobbered by strong local
groundwave signals.
Don't change anything on my account ... there's
plenty of other interesting things to do on VLF, LF and
MF!
Jay
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 6:17
AM
Subject: Re: LF: Eu QRSS freq....
Dear Mike,
first of all, let me say that your signal has
never created any problem here, and I appreciate your careful choice of
operating techniques to mitigate potential interference. As far as I could see, there were only very
few occasions, when spectrograms in Holland and France where
being desensitized when you and XGJ were on
simultaneously. But on the other hand, I think I would have
a problem if I lived much closer to you.
I also completely
understand your point about the lack of feedback from grabbers
operating in the designated Eu slot. In the past, we were
rewarded by excellent captures, for example from Jay and Laurence. In
my opinion, the point of the story is to motivate every LF grabber operator
to include an Eu slot as well.
Regarding choice of frequency: If I remember
right, we went from the original 135.92 kHz to 136.32, because the
latter provided a larger gap between American Loran lines - which is no
more an issue now. But recently, CFH's wideband FSK around 137.0 has
been reactivated. How much does it affect stateside reception on
136.32? If they continue, we may consider to bring the slot back to the
bottom end.
Kind regards,
Markus (DF6NM)
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 11:41 AM
Subject: LF: Eu QRSS freq. Was 'XDV QRSS60
137k'
Hartmut,
You
are right. In the past I have strongly argued that Eu beacons
should be
in that part of the band. However, the reality is that no-
one is
listening there (apart from a couple of Eu grabbers). There
are grabbers
in Alaska, Western Canada, Japan and Eastern Russia but
not one covers
the 136.320kHz sub-band.
That sub-band was originally created when
there were many Eu (mostly
UK) stations chasing QSOs and reports from
the east coast of America -
there were even several Canadians
capable of two-way QSOs. The idea
of the split frequency was that these
QSOs should not cause QRM to
each other. Now there are very few Eu
stations interested in DX
working, and seemingly no east coast American
stations routinely
monitoring.
I try not to QRM those Eu
stations who are monitoring for US and
Russian beacons. This is achieved
by not beaconing every day, and by
not beaconing continuously (which is
why I synchronise each
transmission with the start of each hour). My
frequency is much lower
than most US and Russian beacons. I have also
announced that if my
transmissions cause anyone any problems, I will
close down. In
practice, unless the receiving station is within about
150km of me
there is little chance of real QRM - last night EW6GB was
fully
readable just 0.2Hz HF of me on the grabbers of DF6NM and
OE3GHB.
There is still a use for the Eu DX sub-band during two-way DX
QSOs,
or tests involving lots of activity. I will be the first to use it
again if any DX stations are prepared to monitor it.
Does anyone
else have a view on this?
Mike,
G3XDV
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