Jon Jones wrote:
> If you have the opportunity to operate 6M portable from a
> high quiet location, it is amazing how the band sounds.
This is indeed true. I experienced this once, during the solar cycle minimum
of the mid-1970s -- not on 6 meters, but the principle is the same.
A friend and I were operating the California QSO Party from the Mahogany
Flats campground in Inyo County, CA. Our 20-meter monobander was pointed at
the east coast and situated on the edge of a cliff overlooking Death Valley,
about 8,000 feet almost straight down.
We fired up the generator and tuned up the rig, and we immediately started
hearing a lot of signals from the east coast. We called and called, but
couldn't make a contact to save ourselves. We checked and rechecked all the
transmitter parameters, and we were without a doubt putting out about 120
watts of RF. Then we noticed that all the 4s and 5s seemed to be working
each other, and not giving each other very strong signal reports. They were
not working anybody on the west coast, either. But... they were so LOUD! We
couldn't believe they couldn't hear us.
Finally, I happened to glance at the transceiver's S-meter. It wasn't
moving! Then I looked at where the RF and AF gain controls were set. They
were maxed. The signals SOUNDED "loud" because there was absolutely NO
NOISE. The F2 MUF was probably somewhere around 10 MHz or less, and 20
meters was basically dead. We were listening to signals so weak in absolute
terms that the eastern US guys down on the ground couldn't have heard us if
we had been running a kilowatt or 10 kilowatts. 100 kilowatts... maybe. :-)
Bill W5WVO
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