Yesterday, with considerable coaching from Steve Ratzlaff, AA7U, I successfully rebuilt my VE7VV Bandpass Filter. Although the response curve isn't flat across the band, and is still centered around 473kHz, it knocked down the NDB "BRA" at 379kHz running 400W TPO that's about 2/3 mile (1km) away from my QTH here in the

western NC mountains. It had been booming in at about -38dBm (S9 +30dB) according to my Elecraft P3 Panadaptor, and the filter has reduced it by 60dB down to -98dBm. While I have some capacitors on hand that I could try, in order to shift its response further up the band - I started at 467kHz - and flatten the response, I may just leave well enough alone and simply enjoy what I have.

During the early evening, however, there were a lot of storms in the general region, and static peaks were regularly hitting -90dBm. This wasn't as frustrating as I expected, however - I was clearly able to see Tom, WB4JWM's signal peaking above it at his usual -80dBm, the same as when we worked the other night, and

I made a two-way with W3TS at about 0109 on FST4 - he was "-24" and I was "-12" according to WSJT-X.

The noise was at about -95dBm then, but in looking at the panadaptor, it was obvious that the filter was doing its job, rolling off by about 10dB per 10kHz away from the center frequency and hitting the noise floor of the K3's receiver of -128dBm at about 434 and 524kHz.

I was concerned that the distant storms and the filter might affect my WSPR performance, and I only heard 6 uniques overnight, across 117 spots. But I think that may've also been due to band conditions generally speaking. My best DX, however, was KB5NJD at 1367km, who was reporting his power at 0.5W !

I was heard by 45 uniques across 808 spots, with the best DX being "SWLEM3" at 1494km, which is nice, but I have been heard at greater distances over the past week, which corroborates the band conditions, I think.

Thank you, Steve AA7U, and my thanks also to Steve VE7SL, Doug K4LY, and my neighbor David N1DAY (who's even closer to BRA than I am, at about 0.5mi; he's just under a mile from me) for all of your patient help.

Very 73,

Brandy, N1HO