[SECC] New Beverage at W8FN

[ku8e]

RandyMost of the EU stations I worked were earlier in the evening right after our sunset. None were heard at their sunrise either morning. Conditions were definitely not as good as the past several years. I'm in a quiet location but I'm thinking of putting up some type of receive antenna before CQ 160 to have something that has some directivity.JeffSent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
-------- Original message --------From: Randy Farmer <w8fn at windstream.net> Date: 12/6/20  3:44 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: secc at contesting.com Subject: Re: [SECC] New Beverage at W8FN 
    Since I don't have a transmit antenna for 160 meters, I spent some
    time just listening in the 160 contest. Friday night I heard several
    EU stations quite well, but I was plagued by the noise problem,
    which shows up as ugly humps of noise with about 60 kHz spacing (a
    sure sign of crap from a switch mode power supply). Saturday night I
    went to work and discovered to my relief that it was self-inflicted.
    It turns out that the noise was coming from my 12V accessory power
    supply, which does have a SMPS in it. I've been using that same
    supply for many years to run all my station accessories without
    noticing the noise before. For the first time, my receive noise
    level on 160 meters is low enough to make the noise very obvious. I
    fixed the problem by ripping out the cheap internal supply and
    wiring in a Samlex SEC-1235 supply I had lying around as a standby.
    With the noise gone, it became easy to hear weak signals all across
    the band. I didn't stay up late, but it seemed the EU signals were
    few and far between Saturday night.
    
    After lots of listening and switching directions on the NE-SW
    Beverage over the last week, I'm even more impressed with its
    performance. As a matter of fact, I now have a second kit on order
    to put up another one running SE-NW, and I'm busily building a
    switch box to give me switchable coverage in four quadrants.
    
    73...
    Randy, W8FN
    
    On 12/2/2020 12:29 PM, Randy Farmer
      wrote:
    
     I have no 160 meter antenna so far, so I just
        spent a few minutes listening on 160 meters. I was able to hear
        some EU stations on the Beverage quite well. Unfortunately, I
        also found that there was some kind of ugly local electrical
        noise on 160 that I'll need to track down and get fixed before I
        can expect to do anything on that band.
    
    
  

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