On 7/5/2024 3:00 PM, Roger Kennedy wrote:
I operate 160m mobile, and it's really depressing driving around. There is a
general noise level of S7 everywhere . . . only when you get about 10 miles
from any town or power line does it drop to about S3
And remember that S-meters are simply a voltmeter, caiibrated (with
wildly variable accuracy) to the voltage at the RX input. It provides
nothing more than a RELATIVE idea of one signal's strength compared to
another, but it tells us NOTHING about the actual strength of these
signals (or the noise) because the radio knows nothing about how that
voltage relates to the actual field strength (that is, how efficient it
is). I would expect the efficiency of a 160M mobile whip to be quite
low, so the actual noise is likely to be MUCH stronger than S7 received
by a decent fixed antenna.
73, Jim K9YC
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