[Lowfer] Spot, story

[Chris - KC0TKS]

The past few nights I have monitored the 185.3 watering hole. SIW 
(faintly) is there most every night, occasionally  strong enough to ID. 
As usual, SIW was there last night.

Now my story. You can choose to believe it or not. 

I monitor either the 137 or 185 watering holes overnight every night and 
listen for 10 meter beacons during the daytime hours. I switch between 
my G5RV and my Eprobe every day and night because my G5RV does better on 
10 than the Eprobe. Yesterday morning I got up and checked the 185kHz 
captures from overnight and there was SIW, like always, faint but still 
there, with an occasional strong character or two. After finishing 
looking through all of the captures, I went to switch antennas - there 
was no antenna attached to the rig! I had disconnected the 10 meter 
antenna but forgot to connect the Eprobe. I copied SIW at his usual 
strength with no antenna!

Here is my theory, please ring in if you have other ideas. With my 
Eprobe attached, I have about 10dB over S9 noise on 185kHz. This noise 
is the main reason my lowfer reception is so limited. With the antenna 
disconnected, obviously my noise is nil. My rig (TS-450s) has AGC and I 
also run AGC in Argo. With nothing for noise, gain on the rig and Argo 
should be wide open. When my eprobe is disconnected from the rig, the 
connector from the power inserter hovers behind the rig, hanging by its 
stiff ground wire, about 3 or 4 inches from the connector on the back of 
rig. With the high AGC gain from not having any noise, I must have 
picked up enough signal from the antenna connector a few inches away??

I do poorly on 185, but pretty good on 137. Tonight, as an experiment, I 
will do an overnight run on 137 with the antenna disconnected to confirm 
my theory. If anyone is on early enough, I will do a SNR comparison with 
antenna / no antenna (provided my theory pans out).

Those who would like to take up a collection to pay for a psychiatrist, 
my address on QRZ is good!


Chris - KC0TKS