[NLRS] 10GHz Monday

[wb0ljc@juno.com]

Hi All,

Here is my addition to  the e-mails of Mel and Jim.

I was at the Chubb Church site which is a north of
Northfield and south of Lakeville. The site is in Eureka
Township at the intersection of Cty 17, Highview Ave,
and Cty 84, 267th St W. Mel and I have used this site 
in July to test a few of the SE MN sites. Results then
where also very positive.

Mel had good signals at all five sites. Signal reports were
59 at Simpson and Chatfield, 57 at Wykoff, 55 at Harmony
and between 52 to 55 when Mel was at Mabel. 

I also worked Jim, KFC, using tree scatter. We started off
beaconing to each other, but no signals we heard. I expected
signal to be weak because I was pointing into dense trees only 150
yards away. I could see the thermal noise increase on my S meter.
Since nothing was heard I decided to point the dish up to 
scatter off the tree tops. Jim heard my beacon weakly. When I tried
to peak on him, signals were spread over a 20d azimuth with
no real peak. We did manage to make a SSB contact but signals
were very weak even though the path was only 20 miles.

While waiting for Mel arrive one of his sites I was looking at the
horizon with my binoculars. I had run the path from the Church 
to the Minneapolis buildings on Radio Mobile. The results showed
that I should be able to see the buildings, if there were no trees in
the way. Through the haze I saw what I thought was the IDS tower.
Donn, VOI, and Bob, AUS, were at the Ridgeway site so I had them
shoot some RF toward the buildings. Signals were excellent, 59+20.
Gary, GHZ, was also on frequency so we tried off the buildings.
This time signals were very weak but I did finally peak at  52 with
some QSB. However, I don't think Gary was hearing me that well.
Next we tried direct, even though I have a thin line of trees about 
200 yards away. This time signals were 57, very easy copy.
It is interesting that the bounce shot was so weak. We must 
have a bad angle between us. From the Chubb Church site
you can only see the tops of the three tallest buildings.
We need to try other sites in the Metro area to see if they
work. I am particularly interested in trying the N metro sites 
of Monti, Elk River, Fletcher, Loretto, etc. Maybe next weekend.

See you at breakfast. We can talk over the second weekend 
of the 10G Cumulative. It would be nice to generate a point
total of over 10k using just the Metro sites.

73,  Gary  WB0LJC


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