Can you hear me now? Can you . . . Hello? Anybody there?
Lately I think I've mentioned a few times that I have a politician station, one that talks a lot and everybody hears it but it doesn't listen so well. That opinion is being reinforced today.
I am on the 15 meter band, one of the upper bands where long-distance communication is pretty common. The various maps and tools I use indicate that the band is hoppin'. There are people posting reception reports on the reverse beacons for stations in Europe and South America. Some Japanese stations are reporting in.
I'm showing up on the reverse beacons as well. I call CQ and get good signal reports from all over the US, plus occasionally ones from Australia, New Zealand or Japan. These aren't stations that are trying to contact me -- just ones (possibly unattended) who have reported hearing my signal.
The thing is, I'm calling CQ because I can't hear much of anything. There are a few stations listed in my reverse beacon reports that I picked up while I was out buying dishwasher detergent for my wife, and the highest signal strength I reported was a -20 (with -1 being "you sound like you're right next door to me"). The reports go down to -24 and even one at -27, which is right down in the noise that's always present in the radio spectrum. In contrast the reports people are giving me are good and string, with reports from -4 to -6 pretty common and even a -1 once or twice.
I can only conclude that there's something about my situation that is causing me to be as deaf as a sixth-grader on garbage day. One clue might be the signal strength of the background noise. I seem to remember it was at a fairly low level when I had my station in Montana. On the "S" scale we use it was maybe S2 or S3. At the moment my noise level is around S9, which would be a good signal if it were coming from a transmitter instead of . . . everywhere. In Montana I was still in the middle of a moderate-sized city, but those were the days before ubiquitous computers, cell phones, digital this and digital that and every piece of equipment in your house from your cable box to your toaster having a computer chip in it. Did I mention that computer chips are active sources of radio interference? There's a famous article from QST magazine where a guy built a transmitter from a single hex NOR gate integrated circuit and a few spare parts. It was a really weak transmitter, but he hooked it up to an antenna and made a few contacts with it.
I can only hope that the reason I'm getting so much noise is because my antenna is so low to the ground and runs through the house, picking up RF interference from all the computers we have around here. Once I figure out how to get the antenna higher in the air, the noise will die down and I'll be able to hear the weaker stations. I hope. (My favorite antenna in Billings was 30 feet up in the air. I wish I still had it.)
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I am on the 15 meter band, one of the upper bands where long-distance communication is pretty common. The various maps and tools I use indicate that the band is hoppin'. There are people posting reception reports on the reverse beacons for stations in Europe and South America. Some Japanese stations are reporting in.
I'm showing up on the reverse beacons as well. I call CQ and get good signal reports from all over the US, plus occasionally ones from Australia, New Zealand or Japan. These aren't stations that are trying to contact me -- just ones (possibly unattended) who have reported hearing my signal.
The thing is, I'm calling CQ because I can't hear much of anything. There are a few stations listed in my reverse beacon reports that I picked up while I was out buying dishwasher detergent for my wife, and the highest signal strength I reported was a -20 (with -1 being "you sound like you're right next door to me"). The reports go down to -24 and even one at -27, which is right down in the noise that's always present in the radio spectrum. In contrast the reports people are giving me are good and string, with reports from -4 to -6 pretty common and even a -1 once or twice.
I can only conclude that there's something about my situation that is causing me to be as deaf as a sixth-grader on garbage day. One clue might be the signal strength of the background noise. I seem to remember it was at a fairly low level when I had my station in Montana. On the "S" scale we use it was maybe S2 or S3. At the moment my noise level is around S9, which would be a good signal if it were coming from a transmitter instead of . . . everywhere. In Montana I was still in the middle of a moderate-sized city, but those were the days before ubiquitous computers, cell phones, digital this and digital that and every piece of equipment in your house from your cable box to your toaster having a computer chip in it. Did I mention that computer chips are active sources of radio interference? There's a famous article from QST magazine where a guy built a transmitter from a single hex NOR gate integrated circuit and a few spare parts. It was a really weak transmitter, but he hooked it up to an antenna and made a few contacts with it.
I can only hope that the reason I'm getting so much noise is because my antenna is so low to the ground and runs through the house, picking up RF interference from all the computers we have around here. Once I figure out how to get the antenna higher in the air, the noise will die down and I'll be able to hear the weaker stations. I hope. (My favorite antenna in Billings was 30 feet up in the air. I wish I still had it.)
This entry was originally posted at http://banjoplayinnerd.dreamwidth.org/14109.html. Please comment there using OpenID.