[HCARC] 80 meter short distance comm

[SARA SANDSTROM]

I'm not sure who in the club is working the short range 80 meter question.  

For everyone's info, here is a list of 80 meter contacts that covered 100 miles or less.  My station consists of an ~70 Watt transmitter and a Butternut HF2V vertical.  The vertical is not a good choice for a short range antenna, a low dipole should do better.  Of the dozen contacts, 11 were in the even ing after dark  and 1 was in the morning before sunrise.  None were pre-arranged.  Two were good CW signals but would probably not have been useful for SSB, 3 would probably have been marginal for SSB and the remaining 7 would have produced useful SSB signals. All would have been adequate for PSK. 

The contacts included Junction, Salado, Georgetown (2), Austin (4), Liberty Hill, Dripping Springs, Round Rock and Selma.  The stations on the other end were using between 40 and 100 Watts with  verticals, inverted vees, or loop antennas.The contact with Junction is possibly ground wave.  The contact with Dripping Springs I believe had both ground wave and sky wave components do to the fading and multipath echo on the signal. 

The problem with using random signals is, except for contests, there is very little activity (actually none!) on 80 meters in this area during the daytime.  However, I am convinced that Austin and closer is easily workable on 80 meter CW using 100 W and almost any antenna at anytime with the exception of during the day if there is a stro ng X-ray flare on the sun.  I also believe that the same area can be worked using SSB if low dipoles and 100 W are used.  My experience has been that QRN is lower in the summer during the day than at night.  I hope that th e club is able to conduct the 80 meter experiment  for Field D ay.  If I 'm available, I certainly plan on listening for all the rov ers and perhaps I'll get a dipole up for comparison with my vertical. 

Kerry