[NLRS] Interesting little 10GHz science project just now...

[Bruce Richardson]

I'm at home and was watching the radar. I called W0GHZ to see if he
wanted to throw some RF around the city so that we would see what
effects we got from the stratus rain and from the one cell to the
Southwest.  Gary and I have worked dozens of times on 10GHz so this
was going to be more of a learning experience about "working" a cell.

We netted our freq off of downtown and then both started pointing at
the cell.  Interestingly, initially I picked up GHZ's AU sounding
signal at about 300 degrees which was 70 off of the cell.  Apparently
there was some other stratus rain that I was hearing.  We switched to
voice on SSB and the distortion was SIGNIFICANT.

So even tho Gary was pointed at the cell, I wasn't hearing him in that
direction--at least initially.  THen I pointed out to about 236 while
he was on about 232 and there he was on "backscatter".  We switched to
FM and there was lots of crackling.  His FM sig was about a S6.  I
started raising the elevation of the dish and my dish will only go up
to about 23degrees above horizontal.  Above about 15degrees of
elevation, the sig strengths become needle pinning.  I could rock the
dish back and forth and was clearly on the cell.  I was surprised by
how high up we were painting a common volume.  Just checked the Radar
and the cell was east of redwood falls and basically strt north of
Mankato.  So it was getting pretty close in.  Showed only yellow on
the radar.

So set me straight--is this refraction or reflection?  Is backscatter
an ok term?

I think Bob W0AUS may get on in a few minutes and we will try some
more.

Another report later if there is anything interesting to report.....

Bruce Richardson - W9FZ

Agglutinated Beans: Giant and Hypo size --FST