Blew off most of the recent fun contests. Just a few QSO’s in Stew Perry, fewer in NAQP CW, and zero interest in NAQP SSB. Atypical, but there it is.
During Stew Perry I operated long enough to observe the K9AY was having a good night. RX on the K9AY was much better than on the transmit antenna in a lot of cases, even though QRN was relatively low. I was able to copy several stations on the K9Ay that were below the noise on the TX inv-L antenna. The wx conditions had been very wet leading into that weekend, so I expect the ground conditions were better. The radial field for the K9AY got torn up during this seasons leaf harvest, so its mostly just a ground rod. That’s worth investigating more thoroughly and methodically.
Currently the normal shack-time has been squandered toying with the Linux file server. Been toying with some PHP/html curiosities, and getting a project gathering band data from the ARRL Sweep contest migrated to the server. Most recently been more compelled by curiosity into looking at the raw data now available from the reverse beacon network. The “reverse beacons network” is simply a site that has been set up[by PY1NB, F5VIH, and N4ZR, et. al.] to gather spots generated by various CW skimmers that have public access nodes.
Currently the network is fairly irregular, in that most of the skimmers seem to be part-time. But there are more of them active for more regular durations […]
Continue reading Lost Opportunities