[Elecraft] K3 receive on .474.2 kHz

[Fred Jensen]

Having worked coastal marine in Los Angeles for a year while I was 
finishing high school, I have some experience on the Holy Frequency and 
the maritime channels around it.  I strongly suspect that it's still the 
same [only devoid of ships] today, physics doesn't change much over time.

1.  Coastal marine stations are located on coasts and ships are afloat 
in the ocean [this shouldn't surprise anyone :-)].  Consequently, 
propagation was over salt water which for MF ground wave is an order of 
magnitude better than over land.  At night, NMO [Honolulu] was strong in 
So Cal, a path of around 2,500 mi [~4,000 km]

2.  Our MF TX ran 5 KW to a very large, almost full size dual Marconi-T. 
  I believe NMO ran 7 KW to an equally large antenna.  They never had 
problems hearing us.  KPH, KFS, and NMC [SF Bay area, about 400 mi (~650 
km])] were also very strong, a land path but along the coast.

3.  NMC transmits NAVTEX on 518 KHz, or at least did a couple of years 
ago when I last listened.  They're about 120 miles from me, and are very 
strong.

4.  Ships ran a lot less power to more compromised antennas and 
700-1,000 mi GW range was doing good.  Some of the floating RO's told me 
they heard us a lot better than we heard them, even on our beverages.

5.  I'd say that, if you get several hundred miles on 495-510 KHz at 
night limited to 20 watts ERP, you're doing very good.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 50th Running of the Cal QSO Party 3-4 Oct 2015
- www.cqp.org

On 2/23/2015 2:09 PM, Edward R Cole wrote:
> Jim and all:
>
> Quite true.  My poorly constructed sentence lead to a wrong conclusion
> about what I was trying to say.  I was trying to say: "to not expect HF
> world wide skip results on 600m, because ground-wave is the predominant
> propagation mode (there is some sky wave at night time which is usually
> best in winter due to lowest atmospheric noise; summer in most regions
> is accompanied by lots of lightning noise being propagated).