[Lowfer] Watering hole

[Garry Hess]

Monitored 185.3 kHz with QRSS30, slow between 0000 and 0315Z over night. 
Saw traces of both WMs, WMS, and UWL but only managed a full callsign 
decode on WMS, twice. Also looked for Andy on DFCW but couldn't find 
even a trace of signal, nor was EMP evident.

Navtex station $04E, NMB in Savannah, GA is decoding okay this morning 
even with the suspicious peak line in the space spectrum so maybe the 
problem with the New Orleans transmitter is really fixed. However, the 
complaint that there is no decent way to input observed problems with 
Navtex stands.

Years ago I had similar difficulty in reporting a problem wherein a 
local paging transmitter was sliding into TV channel 5 spectrum during 
its "off" times. When I found the problem was detectable by another ham 
30 miles away it clearly wasn't a local problem. I called the Chicago 
FCC office, but they were only interested in whether or not I had a 
preamp in the attic, implying the problem was overload. The fact that I 
had a $50,000 spectrum analyzer documenting the out-of-band operation 
didn't matter. Only because I decoded the paging transmitter Morse ID 
and knew a ham who worked at the Allerton, MI observing site was I able 
to find out who maintained the system and get it fixed.

I just read David's notes on Navtex and see perhaps testing is going on 
at NMG. Thanks for staying on top of this.

73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL