[Lowfer] Monday in the field...

[us66soft at aol.com]

Mid-afternoon saw good signals from HiFERs MP (good to see it back...it 
was conspicuous by its absence in SE Kansas on Sunday afternoon), SIW, 
NC, and USC.  Also heard: EH (fairly well), WV (barely), GNK (clear 
 from time to time), and a little bit of FRC,  I could see MTI's keying 
on Argo, but couldn't hear anything.

Looking at 185.3 around mid-afternoon, both WMS and SIW were doing OK.  
Signal levels looked remarkably steady.

After capturing full IDs from them, I decided to spend the rest of the 
day watching to see if 137 kHz experiences a sunset equivalent to the 
sunrise fade we experience around here.  I observed continuously from 
about an hour before sunset to almost an hour after dark.  As Andy 
likes to point out, you can't draw conclusions from just one 
observation.  However, I did get a trace with slight dogbones at 4 PM, 
diminishing to clean but no dogbones between roughly 4:30 to a little 
after 4:50 PM CST, and then fading in to the point of very prominent 
dogbones after sunset.  According to the S-meter, the noise level 
remained low and nearly constant throughout the period, so the readings 
Argo gave me of MP's signal strength are probably a reasonable relative 
indication.  The pre-sunset fade was about -8 dB from the afternoon 
level, but the post-sunset signal was +12 or better compared to the 
pre-sunset dip.  That's a little more than the fade I usually see from 
WWVB around the same time.  Too bad I didn't see anyone else coming in 
from that general direction; they might have done well too.

John

(P.S. - Tried to send this from my regular mail account once again, but 
a different BS spam blacklist rejected my IP address this time, so it 
looks like I may still be using my temporary backup e-mail for a while 
longer yet.)