[CQ-Contest] 10M NAQP Weirdness

[VR2BrettGraham]

K4SB contributed:

>OK, let's think about it. Radio waves travel at the speed of light,
>and a 10 second delay would translate to about 1.86 billion miles
>before it was again heard. That is approximately the distance to the
>Planet Saturn, or assuming an Earth orbit, a complete round trip 7,410
>times.

<snip some numbers on ESE>

>In no way do I mean to doubt Zack's word about it, but it simply is
>not possible as an LDE.

<snip for clarity>

>I leave it to someone else to figure the gain and power needed to
>bounce a HF signal off Saturn, which is actually twice the distance.
>Even our best orbiting telescopes are not capable of that.

Ed's got a good point there - very unlikely to be that the signal is going off
on celestial walkabout.

Look at the big signals seen when ducting between W6 & KH6 forms.  Far
too many folks have heard things that are more than just hearing your own
signal come back on LP or anything like that - and certainly not because
K1TN is having a laugh in the driveway (besides, he said he uses an IC-735
& those rigs are pretty clean [unless the "phase noise" K5RC mentioned
is background noise, in which case Jim might want to adjust the mic gain
& consider rolling up the window] ;^).

Since "everybody" knows VHF or UHF can't go anywhere (the people who
license me & my station are very much of that opinion), then to have that
W6-KH6 path worked at 1.2 or (I think by now) 2.4 Gc, there could very well be
some funky things that happen at HF, too (especially 10m, which seems to be
a common denominator here).

Oh, the black magic of radio... love it!

73, VR2BrettGraham