[Lowfer] Squiggles in the Wheat Field

[Douglas D. Williams]

Nice capture John.

I received the same two signals last night.

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j231/Goranothos/185300Hz-1.jpg

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j231/Goranothos/185300Hz2-1.jpg

The "WM" graphical did well here in TN pretty much all night, and is still
coming in strong as I type this. WMS was in and out. Nothing else seen.

I have a PLC that gives me some problems in the watering hole. It is
outside the passband of the Argo screen captures, but inside the passband
of even my 250 Hz CW filter, and keeps the s-meter on the R75 at a steady
S7, even when static levels don't cause the s-meter to move in other parts
of the band. Does the electric utility company not understand that they are
interfering with my hobby? ;-)

Doug - KB4OER




On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 8:56 AM, JD <listread at lwca.org> wrote:

> Didn't plan to go out to the field tonight, as I wanted to catch up on
> sleep...and the next two nights are supposed to be warmer anyway.  However,
> circumstances change, and it turns out I'll need to be up early the next
> several mornings.  So, tonight may be my last chance to monitor until next
> week.
>
> On one hand, I'm glad for the change in plans, because I managed to catch
> two new stations (for me) on 1750 meters.  On the other hand, they also
> came
> at the cost of a certain amount of frustration.
>
> The view shown here captures WMS and WM on the same screen.  I'm very happy
> with it, but I was even happier with the three views I caught about two
> hours earlier, after giving up on transatlantic activity for the night.
>  The
> earlier captures between 10:30 PM and midnight CST showed just the apexes
> of
> the W and Ms at first, all pale and barely visible.  Then, gradually, the
> slanted lines filled in to form whole letters.  Above them, WMS was strong
> and unfading.
>
> But you'll have to take my word for it.  A quirk of using multiple Argo
> sessions that I mentioned a few months ago showed up again and wiped out
> those captures.
>
> This time, I know more or less _what_ went wrong, although I'm still not
> clear on why.  Argo seems to write settings to the registry mainly when it
> closes, so I have generally been able to give each instance of Argo its own
> "seed" values for autocapture filenames, without appreciable interaction.
>  I
> give Instance One a seed value like "03Jan" and Instance Two the seed
> "03Jan-b" (and "-c" and so on for any additional instances on the same
> day).
> But somehow, tonight, both instances ended up with the same seed value and
> started counting numbers from the same point as well.  Result: Instance 1
> captured WMS and WM as "03Jan00000.bmp" and all was well.  But then, eight
> seconds later, Instance 2 snapped its screen showing SIW on 185.185...and
> saved it as "03Jan00000.bmp" too, right over the previous capture!  They
> repeated that action over and over during the whole hour and a half I was
> tuned to the watering hole, which I discovered only AFTER tuning up to try
> for SJ (next post).
>
> So, I hung around for two more hours in the increasing chill to wait for WM
> to be strong enough again to catch this view.  The teeth were chattering,
> but the result warmed my heart--if not the rest of me.
>
> John
>
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