The March equinox is actually the seasonal peak for certain propagation paths. My one and only Top Band QSO with 9M2AX occurred in late March a few years ago (at my sunset). The path to 9M2 stayed op
This report on RFI mitigation may be of interest to folks here: http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/TR/2007/NPS-EC-07-002.pdf. It was done at the Naval Post Graduate School and almost appears to h
About 30 minutes after local SR, the signal is definitely peaking SW from FN42gk (eastern MA). 73, John W1FV _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
At KC1XX we also have a 1500-foot feedline run to one of our lowband receiving antennas. We use RG-6 with copper clad steel center conductor, but we install a preamp right at the antenna to compensat
Go to http://exax.net/index.html and scroll down the page to "center fed steerable wave antenna". The diagram shows how you can feed a 2-wire Beverage in the center, or anywhere along its length. The
A relatively new source of RF noise is solar panel installations. These are becoming more widespread and I'm now hearing multiple reports of solar panel noise from other hams in my area. The culprit
For weeks I have been hearing a fairly strong persistent signal on 1814.0 kHz. It is either a continuous carrier or a series of slow CW dashes. The signals I hear periodically from buoy beacons come
Based on the RDF metric, which is a very useful way of comparing antennas, the differences between the "best" arrays is not that great--maybe 1 to 2 dB. I have used Beverages and a number of differen
I received a number of replies on the subject of the mystery CW/QRSS signal that I've been hearing every day on 1814.0 kHz. It's strong at my QTH just west of Boston. Most people don't hear it and so
I was lucky enough to visit W1BB in person back in the early 1970's. I got to see his home station and the famous water tower station. As I recall the two stations were a bit further apart than walki
I also use a vertical phased array with 1/8-wave spacing on 80m. I did this because of limited space. Like PE5T describes in his post below, I used the method in ON4UN's book and originally described
I have been observing an intruder whose behavior is unlike anything I have seen before. It consists of a comb spectrum of CW tones in the 160m band. They pulse on and off at a regular interval. There
in this axiom. But in my opinion (and in the opinion of others) the deep and long solar minimum between Cycles 23 and 24 (2006-2010) didn't live up to this axiom compared to the not-so-deep and not-
(Note: disregard my earlier incomplete post) Carl K9LA: " But in my opinion (and in the opinion of others) the deep and long solar minimum between Cycles 23 and 24 (2006-2010) didn't live up to this
What Frank says (below) is 100% correct. There is simply no substitute for time in the chair. I never use any propagation prediction methods. I know from more than three decades of lowband DXing and
I use the "Key Out" line of my K3S to drive the base of a homebrew transistor switch that, in turn, drives a relay coil at the base of my antenna. There is an isolation diode between the K3S keying l
Another sign of things looking up on Topband: I worked VK6VZ on long path at 2128Z today, right at my sunset. Steve peaked 569 from the ENE and he also worked at least a couple other W1's. I also had
It was certainly a great opening between VK6 and my QTH (at W1FV). As Steve indicated, we had been trying to make a LP QSO for a number of years. In the past I had heard him a few times but it was ma
I have also observed enhanced, and sometimes extraordinary, propagation at the onset of disturbed conditions. A recent notable example was the LP QSO with VK6VZ that I reported last month: http://lis