[Lowfer] 630m Wednesday night

[JD]

Today was the first day the ground was sufficiently firm to venture to the 
antenna on the farm.  Crude tests at home had indicated everything was still 
working after the buffer amp and its battery were thoroughly dried out, but 
I wanted to be sure in the field.  Daytime WWVB signal levels would--and 
did--confirm all was well.

Got several decodes of XJM from the 0210 slot onward, typically around -28 
dB and one as low as -33.  XIQ dirst showed up in the 0338 slot, and was 
typically -24 or -25 when it decoded at all.  There was a big gap between 
0514 and 0618 when nobody was copied; then there was one final XIQ at 0618.

Final, in this case, because storms have been steadily working their way 
toward us all evening and were within 90 miles, so I wasn't going to risk a 
repeat of last week's surprise.

I utilized the recent downtime to acquire and install WSPR 2.12, which I 
have gotten to log as it should.  One would think I'd be ready to upload 
logs, but now I find there will be a delay in processing my user signup 
request.  It'd sure be nice if they'd TELL you ahead of time that it's 
manual and you have to wait to get a password...instead of just dumping you 
back at the login page, which of course doesn't work for you yet, with no 
explanation at all.  You don't find anything out about the reason until the 
next time you happen to check e-mail.

John D