[Lowfer] Daytime 630m!

[JD]

Sorry to have not finished the report from Sunday night/Monday morning until 
now. After the nearly 36 hour marathon (which ended prematurely due to a 
sudden thunderstorm right after dark), I thoroughly crashed Monday night 
after getting home.  Went out to the field Tuesday to set up for listening, 
with the idea that I'd then return to town to report...but instead had to 
wait for the sheriff's detective to investigate the latest break-in.  They 
didn't get anything of much value, mostly a small quantity of lumber and 
screws, but did cause more damage to the building.  I spent the afternoon 
and early evening doing some more investigating of my own, and fixing the 
door to where it stays closed again.

To summarize the monitoring results, starting back on Sunday night U.S. 
time:  The 0428 time slot was the first one I watched, with WD2XSH/20 coming 
in at -10 dB SNRr reporting 20 watts, WD2XSH/12 (grid only, this cycle) 
at -7 reporting 1 W power, and WG2XXM (5 watts) at +9.  Next time slot 
revealed WG2XIQ (5 W) at +5 dB and WG2XJM (also 5 W) at 0 db.  This was with 
QRN averaging S5 and peaks above S9.  For reference, XXM was a steady S9+10 
on these early cycles, and a smidgen above S9 the rest of the evening.  (A 
second copy of XIQ showed up 120 Hz higher, FWIW, some 33 dB below the main 
signal.  If it was a hum sideband, the lower one was outside my 250 Hz 
filter passband.)

WG2XKA (1 W) first showed up at 0444 at -21 dB.  WG2XSV first came through 
at 0454 (-23 dB), then WH2XGP just four minutes later at a -9 dB reported 
SNR.  VE7BDQ was not far behind at 0500 and a -11 dB indication.  Together, 
that's ALL NINE of the stations I've ever copied at this QTH, all together 
on the same night for the very first time, in a span of just 32 minutes. 
They all reappeared several times during the night.  XJM remained in there 
through much of Tuesday morning, with a final appearance at -25 dB in the 
1650 UTC slot.  XSH/12 hung around at -24 dB until 1720 (noon plus 20, 
Central Daylight).  And XIQ apparently returned to the air at 1720, and 
continued to be visible at SNRr of -2 to -3 dB until I switched over to 
capture SIW.  After daybreak, QRN quieted to almost nothing, but QRM (mainly 
the broad noise band around .630) kept the overall noise level averaging 
around S2 on my meter.

Now, in an earlier post I mentioned some anomalies during the night.  The 
first one I suspect of being a pirate, or else some really peculiar 
corruption of data.  I started getting decodes of a grid "VM79IC" and 30 dBm 
reported power on both 475.649 (-27 dB) and 475.550 (-33 dB) in the 0508 
slot.  Four minutes later, "WD2WVC/X" showed up on 475.770, also at -33 dB 
SN and reported 30 dBm power.  It didn't return until 1108, this time on 
475.649 again with -30 dB reported SNR.

The second anomaly also materialized a couple of times during the night. 
Here is its first instance:
0556 -24 -0.3   0.475741  0 6AL/BG4HVD 3
This one I suspect of being a freakishly corrupted decode, as it always 
appeared on the same frequency as VE7BDQ.

That concludes what I intended to report on Monday, except for the afternoon 
of SIW, which I haven't had time to stitch together yet.  In summary, 
though, SIW slant mode did increase in strength by about 2 PM, then began to 
dwindle slowly, fading to almost nil before sunset.  That fairly closely 
tracks last week's result.  It returned to a healthy strength around sunset, 
but was fading again before the sudden thunderstorm prompted me to pull the 
plug at 7 PM Monday.  Up until that point, there hadn't been much change in 
QRN from the late afternoon onward.

No more radio activity is planned from the farm until the building is fully 
repaired and additional security is in place.  I don't figure it will 
necessarily keep the bad guys out.  The object is to keep them busy until 
the law has a chance to arrive, and then hopefully provide enough evidence 
to secure a conviction.

73
John