Mal,

  Don't discount the increased interference from switching power
supplies, plasma televisions, PLTs and the like.
Everyone is battling a higher noise floor these days.

My suggestion: get a sail boat and operate from it!


-- 
73 Warren K2ORS
                WD2XGJ
                WD2XSH/23
                WE2XEB/2
                WE2XGR/1



On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 3:07 PM, mal hamilton <[email protected]> wrote:
> LF
> It now takes hundreds of watts to be observed or heard around EU on 137 Khz
> whereas some years back less than 200 watts achieved a good result like a
> QSO on CW. The 130 watt Ropex used by many resulted in many CW QSO'S,
> In those days most Amateurs were using normal antennas like loaded inv L
> systems or some sort of vertical for both RX es TX.
> At present the trend seems to be probe or small loop antennas and these do
> not seem to produce enough signal capture to the RX.
> The DX that I have worked in the past all had large antenna systems.
> These are my observations, maybe others have another theory.
> de mal/g3kev
>