[TowerTalk] NCDXF Vertical Performance @ 500 Feet

Tony 73guddx at gmail.com
Tue May 10 19:46:32 EDT 2022


All:

I've been monitoring the NCDXF beacon 4U1UN on the 20 meter band using 
various remote receivers in Europe as well as other parts of the world 
and I've noticed that the performance of the beacons R5 vertical was 
being better than expected.

In some cases, the beacons signals came within 1 S-unit of other Yagi 
equipped stations here in New York and New Jersey including my own. It 
most cases it was within 2 S-units. I believe the remote SDR receivers 
have calibrated 6db per S-unit S-meters so the readings should be fairly 
accurate.

I once had the same R5 vertical used by 4U1UN as well as other home-brew 
verticals at my station and they rarely came within 3 S-units of my 
SteppIR Yagi at 70 feet. My guess is that there must be some advantage 
to having the beacons vertical mounted on top of the U.N. building some 
500 feet above the ground.

It's interesting to compare your antenna performance to NCDXF beacons if 
you live fairly close to one of them. Here's a short list of remote 
receivers with low noise floors:

New Zealand: http://kiwisdr.owdjim.gen.nz:8073/

Austria: http://kiwi.oe9.at:8074/

U.K.: http://norfolk.george-smart.co.uk:8073/

Tony -K2MO



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