[Lowfer] Ho Ho Ho

[John Andrews]

JD,

I'm not surprised by you only seeing the horizontal line in the "H". 
Yesterday afternoon, I decided to set up for running the traditional Ho 
Ho Ho message (it's gotta be about 13 years now). Then it dawned on me 
that I was no longer using the old TAG/XES LF exciter that had the nice 
menu options for various modes and messages. I now use the 
recently-reworked MF exciter (now with LF/MF bandswitching) that is 
SSB-only. It depends on external audio to perform any modulation.

So, I fired up Spectrum Lab's Digimode Terminal, and wrestled the Hell 
settings to something slow enough to work at 30-60 sec screen speeds. 
Unfortunately, while it does a pretty good job with the "o", the 
vertical lines on the "H" are kind of spindly. But the H's horizontal 
line is just a long dash, making it the most visible. The old TAG/XES 
exciter used coarser frequency steps for Hell, and the segments stood 
out much better.

Anyway, it worked well enough to use, but the spring-like weather in the 
East took a piece out of the coverage. Also, the ionosphere hasn't 
recovered well enough for any TA prop from here. I've gotten used to 
seeing the Ho Ho Ho on Hartmut Wolff's grabber in Germany on Christmas 
Eve, but no luck this year. His XES reception was plenty good enough a 
couple of weeks ago.

Merry Christmas to all!

John, W1TAG

On 12/24/2015 11:51 PM, JD wrote:
> Here in Kansas it was less noisy than last night was for SAQ, but even
> though I started picking up XES and NA about 8 PM CST, they were gone before
> 10 PM and never came up to their usual levels. Kind of baffling.
>
> All I saw of the Ho Ho Ho, actually, was the ---  of the H's.
>
> Christmas Day looks OK here, but I don;t know when the rains are likely to
> begin tomorrow night. Once they start, there won't be any more listening
> from the field until the expected floods end.
>
> John D
>
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