[Lowfer] WSPRing in a thunderstorm...

[JD]

We got through our "green sky at morning" with minimal consequences, apart 
from a power outage followed by an Internet failure.  Mother Nature's 
version of "the cloud" can knock out man's version easily.  All seems to be 
working this evening, so maybe I can give you a quick wrap up of last 
night's adventure before going back to the farm and seeing what the WSPR 
prosepcts are tonight on 630 m.  Here are the two screen shots I mentioned 
last night:

http://lwca.org/mbarchiv/pix/2014/0604wspr2.jpg

This one includes the first decodes of both stations yesterday evening.  XIQ 
was on continuously, but appeared weaker in the shot above while XXM was on. 
I first attributed this to AGC action in the receiver, since XXM is usually 
quite strong, and cranked up the drive to the clipper slightly.  A similar 
results showed up later, leading me to think I'd gone too far with the drive 
and capture effect was taking over...which may have been a contributing 
factor.  But as the evening wore on, I eventually saw that both stations 
were undergoing much wider fluctuations in signal levels than usual.  Some 
of this can be seen in the last screen shot of the night, below.

http://lwca.org/mbarchiv/pix/2014/0604wspr7.jpg

It was interesting to try to guess from the Argo trace when XIQ would be 
strong enough to decode.  Sometimes I'd think it was too weak, but after a 
little extra processing time, the decode would appear.  Other times looked 
just the same to the eye or even a little stronger, but no decodes.

As of tonight, I already had XIQ solidly at sunset, but later the level 
variations got a bit wilder.  In one time slot, the header came through 
fine, then there were 40 seconds of virtually nothing before the signal 
recovered.  That one decoded after an extra delay, but with a 7 dB worse 
reported SNR.  I thought I'd put that one on the memory card too, but 
apparently not.

Static started out about an S-unit lower at sunset, but could get worse at 
any time (it was trending that way when I left to come here and report).  I 
have no idea how long the weather is going to cooperate.  I'd like to think 
maybe I'll be able to snag someone else at 630 tonight, but that depends on 
when the next batch of storms are due to arrive--or worse, materialize in 
place.

John D