[Lowfer] Something to be thankful for, sort of.

[JD]

Went out to the farm for a few hours this afternoon while dinner cooked. 
Lots of buzz on 13.56 when I got there, but more intermittent than last 
night.  Maybe, just maybe, it'll go away when things dry up a bit. 
Everything is still very damp from Monday night's inch of rain.  If it is 
related to moisture, though, I sure hope we don't have too wet a winter!  I 
love what this antenna and buffer amp do when the noise is low enough!

Despite the powerline buzz, HiFERs MP, SIW, NC, and USC displayed nicely on 
Argo, with MP and SIW the most consistent.  The other two were a little 
harder to see when the buzz got especially bad.  When the buzz would vanish 
for a while, MP, SIW, and (sometimes) USC were audible as well.

Good old 1750 m was a noisy place from time to time due to the buzz.  In 
full daylight, I thought I saw a weak "S" from WMS, but I'd like to have 
seen more to be sure.  Sometimes intermittent PLCs get my hopes up with 
apparent signs of keying, until it turns out they're sending "On The Beach" 
pseudo-Morse.

That turned out to be the case when I tuned down to 137.  At first it looked 
like Mitch was not alone this afternoon, which certainly was within the 
realm of possibility, as there was NO QRN on 137, and the buzz didn't show 
up that far down on the dial either.  (Between the very occasional click or 
pop, the meter sat at S2, the internal noise of the receiver!)  Alas, what 
first looked to be two weak QRSS signals below Mitch eventually turned out 
to be gibberish.  I ran one Argo instance at 30-sec dots and one at 60-sec 
just to be sure I wasn't missing something about those signals, but MP was 
the only real one.

Well before dark today, DCF77 was already fair to good, LORAN was slightly 
audible, and Medi 1 was good at 171 kHz.  (I wonder what their north African 
listeners make of Janis Joplin?)  Other LWBC carriers could be detected, but 
the programs weren't heard yet.

At or just after 5 PM, as the sun was setting, I saw a nice strong apparent 
dit on 185.185, but nothing further.  After watching for several more 
minutes, I went back to LWBC, by which time France Inter was coming in like 
a local, and Medi 1, Iceland, and Europe 1 were all fair.

The moment the sun went down, it got mighty chilly out there, so I came home 
for supper.  (The less said about the entree, the better.  Smelled good, but 
the turkey loaf had the texture of Spam.)  I managed to feast mainly on 
vegetables and rolls...was even able to resist pie...and that was enough to 
make me too sleepy to want to go back out there tonight.

The weather was colder today than predicted.  Tomorrow may be warmer, so 
I'll probably be out there longer, unless the wind picks up too much more.

John