[Lowfer] LF reception

[Garry]

Another interesting night of LF signals. Here, evening propagation to 
the south was enhanced with many distant NDBs coming through. For 
example:  PTE, Portete, Columbia, 420 kHz; Tulcan, Ecuador, 418 kHz; 
CBC, West End, Cayman Isl., 415 kHz; DDP, San Juan, PR, on 391 kHz; GPI, 
Guapi, Columbia, 309 kHz; and DOM, Melville Hall, Dominica, 273 kHz. By 
0900Z though propagation was enhanced nicely to California with NDBs MOG 
on 404 kHz, FCH on 344 kHz, and SB on 397 kHz copied. At the same time 
though wspr-2 474.2 kHz signals from NW were noticeably absent but 
WH2XCR in Hawaii was decoded once with minimal SNR using wsjt-x1.7.0.

The wsjt-x1.7.0 was run simulataneously with wspr-x0.8 and the former 
had a 1 dB SNR advantage most of the time. This was done on 136 kHz wspr 
with a second receive setup also and again the SNR advantage for WH2XND 
was generally 1 dB. So in the future I'll use wsjt-x1.7.0. That will 
probably further increase the rate of bogus decodes. I try to filter 
them away before sending logs to the wspr spot database but so far I've 
still missed a few.

As I write this, lowfer WM is coming through nicely at the watering hole 
with FSK just above local SIW sending QRSS30/60.

73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL