[Lowfer] HiFER SIW Again At Last

[pbunn]

I shut USC down about 2:00 pm local time. I was doing some RF work in the shop and it was getting into the circuit I was testing . I forgot to. Plug it back in. I'll go do it now before I forget.

Pat
N4LTA

JD <listread at lwca.org> wrote:


After monitoring 185 and before going back to 468 for a while longer, I
watched an unusual event take place at 22 meters.  For the first time in
weeks, I saw traces of what appeared to be the SIW HiFERs....or at least,
the slant mode version.  MP, EH, and NC were also present with fair signals,
along with CODAR pulses, but no USC.

Suddenly, CODAR went away and both SIWs blossomed into view as strong as
they ever were last summer.  This was not the result of the reduced noise
level, however, as neither CODAR nor any of the signals had reached AGC
threshold.  When SIW appeared, MP remained relatively constant, but EH and
NC both faded for a few minutes, then gradually returned.  As they did, it
was as if someone threw a switch and attenuated SIW to nearly background
level while simultaneously turning CODAR back on stronger than before.
After 20-some seconds, CODAR returned to its earlier levels, MP remained the
same, SIW QRSS remained obscured, and SIW slant was faintly visible.

I had just set up an Argo instance in 10-sec mode to watch the slant signal
prior to the Big Turn Off, and continued to run it through the next ID
(attached).  QRSS3 SIW is visible at the far left until the sudden
attenuation.

I was also running multiple 3-sec screens at the same time, and will stitch
them together into a supersize view later to show how the signals varied
with respect to each other.  USC never did show up today, and none of the CW
stations were audible except for a character or two at a time from FRC.
(Some thermal drift from clouds drifting; at end of capture, 800 =>
13555.400 kHz.)