[AMRadio] Low Power AM Night

[Paul Goodman]

While a couple of my low power rigs warmed up, I
started listening to the band around 19:00 local time
on Low Power AM Night at the qth, which is about 12
miles north of Endicott, NY.  Elevation here is ~1,500
feet and I run a 135 foot north/south dipole fed with
450 ohm window line.  When low power conditions are
favorable, I can do pretty well on AM with 5 watts or
less.

Unfortunately, by 8:00 Wednesday night, 3.880 was
nothing but a pile of hash.  The band had already
started to go long, and even with the filter on my
HQ-170 cut down to 1 kc, there was little to hear but
noise, slopbucket qrm, static and of course,
heterodyne squalls.  Occasionally, a midwest signal
would momentarily become audible, but there was so
much activity and the resultant qrm, as well as qrn,
made almost all of it unintelligble.  A qso had been
taking place between a few northeast stations on the
frequency, but they'd been on for an hour or so
already.  In between their xmsns, a midwest signal
might become semi-audible through the noise.  It was
far from pleasant to listen to and I knew that any low
power xmsns on my part would be futile.  So, I finally
gave up around 9:00 and shut down.  

Adding to this mess was the fact that a slopbucket net
(something called "The Goodwill Net" from down around
Kentucky as I understand it) had decided to pick that
particular night to begin holding their net on, of all
frequencies, 3.888!  Some "goodwill" that created up
here in the northeast, let me tell you.  It may have
been that the qrm from the "Goodwill" boys caused a
few AMers to migrate down the band from 3.885 which
might have added to the pile up on 3.880.

I'd look forward to another try at this. Perhaps
frequencies need to be spread out a bit and/or the
start times staggered to prevent pile ups on a single
frequency. 

Paul K2ORC 

 




KC4QLP at aol.com wrote:
> read about the high static levels from
> the LOWFER guys.When I did 
> get home around midnight eastern ,I too was
> "greeted" by the high static.If 
> you werent 20 over S-9 or better...forget it.However
> Monday and Tuesday 
> evening was GREAT!...shame mother nature had to get
> her "low" power 
> transmitter fired up last night.....lol
> 
> Suggestion/question: ...is anyone up to trying for
> another low power AM night 
> ? If so....it needs to be planned quick as the
> evenings filled with static 
> are just going to get more numerous as we get closer
> to spring and summer.



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