[Lowfer] 2200m WSPR

[listread at lwca.org]

I think XND must go QRT at some point during the night. I had great copy
through the end of the 0648 UTC time slot this morning, then nothing
further! The apparent skywave PLCs, and a mysterious carrier slowly
stepping up in frequency between 137.420 and .430, all remained nicely
visible, and there was no evident change in noise level.

In the spots I uploaded to WSPRnet, there are a few during the late
evening where the SNRr was as high as +4 dB. Not only was the signal
audible at that point, it was downright loud!  Ignoring the arbitrary 2.5
kHz bandwidth against which noise is calculated for display by the WSPR
software... within the actual 250 Hz bandwidth of the IF filter, it was
possible to measure the carrier at 5 S-units above the median noise value.
 The Argo cursor confirmed that signal was generally 30 to 33 dB higher
than adjacent noise-only bins at that same time.  It's very seldom that
I've seen a signal at 2200 meters move the SW-meter at all, but XND was up
to S7 at times, while the median noise was around S2.

Despite a line of t-storms from west central Colorado down into western
Arizona, static was tolerable, and propagation also looked good from the
east after I gave up on XND.  Am seeing nice, clear WSPR15 from SIW, saw
the best SJ of the season thus far, and caught a beautiful QRSS "W" from
WM before I secured the site to return to town and make this report. Will
head back in a while with high hopes for further positive results.

Probably won't be in the field tomorrow night, though! It was 50 out there
just now, but that will plummet during the day, leaving us very near 0 for
the next two nights.  Also had excellent illumination from moonlight for a
while, until the fog moved in.

John

On Sat, December 17, 2016 12:01 am, N8OOU wrote:
> John,
>
>
> Thanks for supplying some numbers on 2200m to compare. I let Wspr run
> overnight, then on to mid morning. I experienced a loss of signal in the
> predawn to postdawn timeframe, but then XND came back in after the full
> sunrise.
>
> My biggest issue is I left the LowFer running and it is mixing with
> something in the daytime to block XND completely when it transmits. I could
> only decode Wspr in between WM transmissions. The two antennas have only a
> couple hundred feet separation.
>
> 73   de   N8OOU - Mike Meek
>
>