Topband: PP5JR/PT5A

[K1ZM@aol.com]

Greetings from the land of the GIANT noise clouds!

My apologies to those I could not hear last night.  Despite two sets of side by side 1000 foot beverages and a PENNANT on Europe, this place continues to DEFY hearing on Topband.

I am down here for what is now the the third time to this QTH at 4,000 ASL - largely to see if it is possible to find an RX antenna that works to defeat what seems to be constant atmospheric noise of about S9 - sometimes higher.

>From all I can see, it is not man-made as I can not hear any BUZZ on the AM detector on an FT1000D.

Last night I worked about 14 stations - most of them in the USA.

Best signal was W8JI. About 569 with quite deep QSB.....

Others above average included NO8D, KV0Q, NA0Y, and N7DD.

Most of the rest were in and out of the noise and it was really tough pulling out W2MF, W8AH, and AA1K just before I called it a night around 07z.

After about 2 hours sleep, I got up and erected a simple RX loop tuned with about 800PF in parallel with the thing - it is aimed at the USA and ready to try tonight.

I also added a USA pennant and will try tonight to determine which (if any) of these antennas - LOOP, PENNANT or two different USA beverages - one a pair of side by side 1000 footers and one a simple 1000 footer about 6" above the ground will do anything to the damned noise!  I have never seen a place where virtually NOTHING works on Rx - guess now I know what 9M0C must have been like!  It is a humbling experience!!


Sorry for the hearability problem guys - by the way, the xmit antenna seems to work okay - it is a full-sized self supporting vertical at about 130 feet - with 130 full-sized quarter wave radials. I did try to listen on it as well briefly last night - what a racket! No help at all either.

So far, not a single EU station heard here - but I will try again tonight.

We will stay on 1828+/- or so again tonight -  signing PP5JR.  I can always hear you guys calling - just pulling out a callsign is the problem......

During the CQWW CW contest our callsign will be PT5A.

Hope to be able to hear and work some more of you tonight.

All the best.

73 JEFF

K1ZM at ZX5J/PP5JR/PT5A (in the contest)

K1ZM@aol.com