[Lowfer] Another Busy Night At The Watering Hole 185.3KHz

[ToddRoberts2001 at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/20/2010 1:53:37 P.M.  Eastern Standard Time,  
k5wms at centurytel.net writes:

Todd  refresh my memory and tell us what you are using for rec and rec   
antenna.
nice job
Paul k5wms


Thanks  Paul,
WMS seems to be a regular in the  watering  hole when conditions are 
good. 
You are doing a nice job  with the beacon.

Receiver I am using is  the  Icom R75 with the CR-282 high-stability 
option and both 250Hz CW  filters in the 9MHz and 455KHz slots. I calibrate 
the  
receiver and  ARGO reader using WWV 15MHz.  I set the twin passband   tuning
controls for a bandwidth of roughly 60-70Hz. Antenna is a Steve   Ratzlaff
active whip hoisted up into a nearby Pine Tree about 40 ft above  ground  
level and about 80 ft of RG-213 back to the radio room. The  antenna is up 
in the clear  
about 30ft away from the house so the  location is pretty quiet.

I am having very  good results using a fast  audio limiter between the 
receiver audio  line output and sound card input. The limiter is a standard 
Alesis 3630   
compressor/limiter set to hard limit the audio output from the R75. This  
does a nice job of  
clipping static spikes from overloading the input  of the sound card and 
producing lines of  
noise on the screen. It makes  the difference of being able to see weak 
QRSS  signals 
on a noisy day  or night without the screen filling up with static  lines.

The limiter also works well  to  level the audio going into the sound 
card so the ARGO reader sees a  constant level of background noise once the 
level is set to  
run  overnight. This helps to keep the background  of the screen a constant 
 brightness  
whether the band takes a fade or picks up when left  unattended. I would 
say adding the  
limiter has done a lot to improve  weak-signal copy on the ARGO reader.

73 - Todd WD4NGG EM92oe