[Lowfer] Watering hole over night at NE IL

[Garry and Linda Hess]

The restored W3EEE grabber displayed good copy of both MP and WM for 
quite a few hours over night (the distance between W3EEE and WM is about 
323 miles if I have the grid squares correct - FN10sf and FN42kp, 
respectively). Unfortunately, as the W3EEE interference lines waned mine 
rose starting at 1130Z 021209 and my noise floor rose markedly too so 
that at times even copy of MP was marginal here. By 0000Z 021309 MP had 
regained SNR, but the interference lines again rose up as CV came into 
good view. With ARGO QRSS-30 until about 0700Z WM was not noticed. At 
that time the W3EEE grabber was displaying both MP and WM nicely, but 
not CV. My output was good for MP and CV, but no WM.

Switched to monitoring TAG at 185.8 kHz using Wolf-10 and got one 
successful decode interval, though it took a good while and it didn't 
persist:

2009-02-13 08:39:10 >WOLF10  -r 10800.689 -f 400 -t 1.0 -w 0.0000 -ut

09:23:58 f:-0.088 pm:28.61 jm:551 q: -1.3 -8.5 TAGC9E 9/C8MN87 ?
09:25:34 f:-0.088 pm:31.48 jm:551 q: -1.2 -5.9 TAG RAYMOND ME  -
09:27:10 f:-0.088 pm:31.68 jm:551 q: -1.2 -8.1 TAG RAYMOND MD9 ?

The distance to TAG is just slightly greater than to WM (916 mi vs 883 
mi; CV is 519 mi) and of course the headings are very similar. The 
sensitivity advantage of Wolf-10 compared to QRSS-30 is at least 3 dB (I 
think) and that may be the reason TAG was decoded (barely) but WM wasn't 
seen. If so, just a bit less path loss or more antenna gain and less 
noise on this end should make WM visible here. I wonder if Andy, KU4XR 
at 675 miles has seen WM yet?

73,
Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL.