Topband: C21MM

[vk3od at yahoo.com]

 They seem to be struggling with poor reception and noise.

I was calling them for 2 nights  straight on FT8 while their signal was very strong on an inverted L. Even VK's with better antennas than mine seemed to be struggling to be heard. They are  located in our backyard and it was tough! 

I thought I had a faulty  antenna, however I exchanged reports with general US FT8 stations with good reports. My feeling was that they had their RX antenna pointed towards JA and for VK stations we were in the noise because of the FB of the DHDL RX antenna.

There also was a consistent wall of JA's calling on FT8. On my BOG I could decode all the US and JA callers simultaneously.  Everyone calling from the US was strong and they should have had no issues working any station in the USA that call based on the signal strength in VK. 

The window was covered with a smear of JA signals. Since  the average NA signals were sitting at -10 to -15 on FT8 while JA's were probably 10 to 20 Db stronger it would have been  a struggle even for stations with 4 Squares. Their run rate seemed rather poor considering the number of stations calling(mostly JA) 

It was tough for all callers.

73
Craig ,, VK3OD