Topband: [Fwd: Your "echo " on 160]

[Ford Peterson]

> Dear Topander, 
> 
> 
> Do LDE's occur on 160?
> 
> 
> Herb

Herb,

I have heard some pretty strange stuff.  During one recent contest, near solar midnight, a fella called me after my CQ and I thought I was going batty.  The signal was strong.  But a zero beat signal was right on top of him.  I mean EXACTLY zero beat!  The other signal was also very strong, so there was no way to differentiate between the two.  I made the poor guy repeat his call about 4 times before the (what I now believe to be) echos started to disappear.  The echo finally started to disappear for portions of his call and that's when I realized that the other tone was actually the same signal coming from outta nowhere, exactly zero beat, which made the nonsense sound like one tone.  The delay was about the space of one whole character at 28 WPM.  I really wish I had a big red button to start a tape recorder.  I've heard delays before, but never like this one.  The delay was very long--too long for any sort of backscatter explanation.  I think the station was in Colorado, and I'm in Minnesota.

I have also experienced situations where I believe a QRP station was answering me.  Except the same nonsense would happen and I'd think it was several stations calling me at once--all exactly zero beat.  I'd finally work out the callsign and finish the Q, only to never hear another whisper out of the other callers.  My interpretation of this is that were no other callers.  It was one signal with a very strong response from another path.

I was fascinated to listen to an echo recorded by Tree.  It was posted here a couple of weeks ago.  Only this recording was Tree sending and receiving his own signal back with a long delay.  Weird...

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com