Good Morning, y'all -
From what I've seen on this list lately, it appeared that all of the "action" was out
in the Pacific Northwest, and I interpreted that as a thrown gauntlet.
We finally made our annual migration from south Florida up to the mountains of western
North Carolina, and managed to get the shack more or less assembled over the weekend.
The inverted-L was in great shape - the 18.3m (~60ft) vertical section is a "cage" of eight
wires in an 8-inch circle, and the horizontal section is 59.5m (~195 feet) of 10AWG Copperweld.
I measured its ground resistance (at its resonant frequency of 1041 kHz) at 25.8 Ohms,
which was a little disappointing, but I plan on cleaning a lot of connections and adding a
thick braid from the ground radial confluence to the bottom of the "Ernie Coil". The vertical
portion is hung from a tree branch, and there are a lot of surrounding trees which stay quite
wet here in the Smokies, and probably absorb a lot of rf. The horizontal leg runs 340 degrees,
i.e. to the NNW, over the house to a line flung over a wye in an oak tree. All on 0.7 acres!
The "Ernie Coil" was inherited from KC4SIT (SK), and is about 20.5 inches in diameter and
has about 100 turns spanning 19.5 inches. I used my Peak LCR meter to measure 3.17 mH
overall, and found my old taps from 2 years ago and readily achieved resonance at 475 and 137 kHz.
Yesterday, I hooked up the K3 and all of the 630m giblets, including my homebuilt WB4JWM
amplifier, but am having problems keying the DPDT coax relay properly. So, after installing
WSJT-X on my new laptop, I set up WSPR on receive-only at about 2330Z, and let it run overnight;
thankfully, the weather behaved as there was a 20% chance of thunderstorms predicted, which is typical.
As of 1300Z this morning:
| Timestamp | Call | MHz | SNR | Drift | Grid | Pwr | Reporter | RGrid | km | az | Mode | # Spots |
|---|
| 2022-08-15 08:46 | N9RU | 0.475666 | -21 | 0 | EM57mp | 5 | N1HO | EM85 | 581 | 113 | 2 | 4 |
| 2022-08-15 05:00 | KB5NJD | 0.475616 | -32 | 0 | EM12mp | 0.5 | N1HO | EM85 | 1319 | 72 | 2 | 3 |
| 2022-08-15 04:56 | WB3AVN | 0.475630 | -29 | -1 | FM19og | 1 | N1HO | EM85 | 695 | 235 | 2 | 5 |
| 2022-08-15 04:52 | K9KFR | 0.475646 | -12 | 0 | EN71gg | 1 | N1HO | EM85 | 678 | 161 | 2 | 12 |
| 2022-08-15 01:24 | VA3VOR | 0.475608 | -30 | 0 | FN03 | 5 | N1HO | EM85 | 953 | 202 | 2 | 5 |
| 2022-08-15 00:14 | K4BYN | 0.475634 | -20 | 0 | FM05qu | 1 | N1HO | EM85 | 401 | 265 | 2 | 36 |
| 2022-08-15 00:06 | NV4X | 0.475726 | -26 | 0 | EM77sx | 1 | N1HO | EM85 | 305 | 155 | 2 | 80 |
| 2022-08-14 23:40 | K4LY | 0.475724 | -13 | 0 | EM85wb | 2 | N1HO | EM85 | 95 | 299 | 2 | 85 |
For those of you trying to look at this on the WSPRnet _map_, please note that I am NOT in Florida
right now - will be heading back right after Halloween - and am about 1 mile away from N1DAY, through
the woods and over the fairway. (I did update my WSPRnet profile, but I guess the map pins are "sticky").
Hopefully, I'll be able to get the 630m amp fired up, some minor improvements made to the antenna
feed system, and get my 2200m transverter unboxed and operational sometime this week.
Very 73,
Brandy, N1HO (EM85sg)