As many of you will recall I had a cerebellum brain bleed in September 2013. I was in hospital for 3.5 months and not at all well. Thankfully, I am still recovering, albeit very slowly.

Today I did my first proper earth-mode VLF field test at 8.976kHz from the QTH we moved in to just before I was taken ill. I was using the 5W QRSS3 beacon into the same earth-electrode set-up used successfully at 472kHz. I went to a RX test site I'd used many times before when TXing from the old QTH, where I used to get strong signals, but this time there was absolutely no copy at all. I even tried 0.3km from the new QTH without success. Clearly, whatever utilities were helping at the old QTH are not there at the newer QTH. From the old QTH, 6km had been spanned by utilities assisted earth-mode with the same 5W QRSS3 TX.

Altogether a very disappointing day, but this was my first field test in over 18 months. More details and photos on my blog at http://g3xbm-qrp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/vlf-field-test-total-failure.html . I am sure there will be a good explanation for these results.

After the tests I was exhausted. In the past this test would have been trivial. Value good health, as you do not know what is around the corner!

73s

Roger G3XBM