[600MRG] Improved propagation here in North Texas

[Tom W8JI]

On 1/17/2023 10:44 AM, John Langridge wrote:
> W8JI was heard on 473.2-ish a few minutes later so I jumped down there
> and called him but it seems that we were at the end of  the peak as he
> headed into the noise pretty quickly here in spite of reporting me
> 579.  I had some local neighborhood noise that I could not resolve at
> the time AND the rotatable RX loop seemed to get worse as I moved it
> to GA making me wonder if the signal was not coming as directly as one
> would expect.  Something to watch in the coming sessions I guess.
John,

You always have a good signal. I think propagation is good, the 5W EIRP 
and local noise must be killing QSO's for everyone.

Keep in mind small loops have a very wide evenly distributed response 
with almost no directional response change except for a very narrow pair 
of nulls.

Unless the loop is very well constructed for feed line and mast 
decoupling, the nulls are often skewed and not nearly as deep as the 
could be. My Wellbrook loop is this way, it has terrible lobe skewing 
from feed line common mode. (In fairness to Wellbrook most small loops 
I've seen have poor balance and respond to signals and noise from the 
feeder and/or mast.)

It might be better to null noise and not even worry about the signal 
direction.  To get a narrow pattern takes at least a hundred feet of 
phased antenna space with multiple antennas on 630M.

Your signal is consistently around S5 to S7 against S1 background on the 
FT1000 MKV bar graph. I think propagation is good, noise just kills a 
lot of QSO's. I think the attached file is you at about 569 with S7 
peaks.  I have to find a better way to do this. :)

73 Tom




-- 
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software.
www.avg.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: KB5MJD(1).mp4
Type: video/mp4
Size: 3741050 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/600mrg/attachments/20230117/92e2e155/attachment.mp4>