[NLRS] When all else fails, let it rain!

[Chris Cox, N0UK]

Holly, KC0ZXS, and I popped out to a store car park yesterday evening 
around 0215Z and setup a portable, narrowband 10GHz station about one mile 
southwest of home, but still within the EN34jv locator.

This store car park overlooks the Minneapolis/St Paul International 
airport and is at the same elevation as the airport runways giving an 
effective clear horizon of roughly 0.75 miles from about 40 degrees 
through East to about 170 degrees.  Not too bad for a site that is right 
in  the heart of the Twin Cities metro area, and an awful lot better than 
our urban city lot in South Minneapolis!

There was a good line of major thunderstorms stretching from the south 
west corner of EN33, running north east up into EN56 that were being 
tracked by national weather service radar in the area.

Within a minute or two, a strong S9 CW rain-scatter beacon was heard from 
N4PZ/EN52gb/IL.  After working Steve, I was called by W9ZIH/EN51nw/IL 
also on CW.  Both of these were new R/S DX record nreakers for me at 437 
and 480km respectively.

I then moved the dish onto a different cell at 85 degrees and heard a 
rock-crushing S9+30dB CW call from K2YAZ in EN74av (Western Michigan). 
After working first on CW, Bob and I switched modes to FM and chatted for 
a few minutes, after which Holly, KC0ZXS, took the reins and worked Bob 
too for her third QSO on 10GHz and her best DX on ANY BAND at 571km!

Several more active stations were heard via  back-scatter, although 
two-way communications were not made almost certainly due to excessive 
doppler shift putting the calls outside of receive bandwidth.  It was 
learnt later that we had each attempted calling each other but not heard 
any response.  Stations heard included K0AWU/EN37/MN, K0KFC/EN35/WI, 
W0GHZ/EN34/MN, and KM0T/EN13/IA.

Had we each realised the severe amount of doppler incurred via the 
back-scatter paths, two-way communiations would have almost certainly been 
established within a 45 minute time period.

In all, 7 separate grids in 5 states were workable from this line of 
storms.  Out on the East coast, that may sound rather ho-hum.  Here in the 
wide open upper midwest, that's exceptional.

Let those storm clouds build!

73 Chris, N0UK
-- 
73  Chris Cox, N0UK  email: chrisc at chris.org or chrisc at BritishCarAndDriver.Com
                                              or chris at SotaMINIs.Com
  Home Page: http://WWW.BritishCarAndDriver.Com   http://www.pingjockey.net

  Don't Believe Everything You Think.