[Lowfer] BeFER (Low HiFER?) WI2XJP

[listread at lwca.org]

Today's listening efforts were limited by rain this morning, then my
taking an unexpectedly long nap at mid-day.  XJP was definitely present
during the afternoon, though. Neither signal nor noise caused the S-meter
to budge, but there was usable copy at least 50% of the time; would have
been more but for the rapid, deep fades that took out part of a
letter...sometimes just a single dit or a fraction of a dah. This
persisted to about three hours before sunset, when copy slowly started to
improve.

>From then on, copy would have been around 60%, increasing to over 80% in
the time span of 90 to 60 minutes before sunset.  In the next 45 minutes
it became nearly 100%, and there were times when signal rose to above S1
briefly.

Signal levels peaked right at sunset, with some characters reaching S9
(but others barely S1, yet still nicely copyable).  After dark, signals
settled down to the S5-S7 range for the most part. The other carrier a few
Hz lower came up in level, too, but was never a problem.  Packed up and
headed back to town at 9 PM CDT.

(BTW, those S-meter readings may not sound too impressive for a decent
receiver hooked to a 15 meter vertical, but that's with an antenna buffer
in the path that deliberately attenuates everything from the low end of
the AM band to about 13 MHz.)

John

On Sat, August 6, 2016 3:03 pm, Warren K2ORS wrote:
> Hi John,
> Thanks for the capture!
> Unfortunately lots of DX but not much of a local signal which is what I
> wanted. Dipole probably too high - nearly 1/2 wavelength above ground.
>
> Will leave it on until Saturday evening, I will put out a note to the
> reflector prior to going QRT.
>
> 73 Warren
>