Please wait...
1280 miles is not spectaculer.
Unless, of course, it is 50Mhz or higher.
Even on six meters, it is not spectacular when compared to E-layer or F-layer propagation. What makes this one special is the possibility of it being a fairly regular path. The beacon is "dead on" in the magic direction here on the mountain, and I'm strongly suspecting what, back east, we used to call "extended groundwave."
On the HF bands the Mountain shows a different, but equally important advantabe.
Absolutely no noise at all until you hit 80m, and even there, not what I used to have back in NJ. Roughly S2 to S3 on 80m, and on the higher frequency bands (40m to 10m), NONE at all. If the S meter moves, it's a stattion, period.
Fun!
Nevada (home of the HarryReid curmudgeon) is what we in northern California use as an example of "yes, it could be much worse" when folks around here start complaining about the left-lib-commie-idiots in Sacramento.
Oh, and everything north of Sacramento is about as conservative as can be - and yes, we know the difference between conservative and RINO.
2015-07-21 14:28 from Animal @uncnsrd (Uncensored)
DMR, anyone?
XPR7550 on its way to me... :O
Sorry - no DMR capability here.
Really (at least for now) concentrating on 6 meters. Large array in the works. 4 element yagis w/ trigonal reflectors. Two will be up and running in about 8 weeks. This will be a "one over the other" stack at about 12' between the antennas, on a rotating mast w/ rotor at the bottom. Eventually another pair, then an H-frame, on the same mast for a total of 16 elements not counting the trigonals (with them the total comes to 24 elements). Most of the pattern compression will be in the H-plane, with total estimated gain of 18 dBd. Front-to-back ratio will be measured once the system is complete, but if my experiences with this type of antenna back East in the 1980s is any indication, the F/B ratio will be very very good.
The goal? To be able to work San Diego from my CM99 grid location 24/7 without a band opening.
We shall see....
--K2NE
Not quite an accomplishment, but I remember downloading some programs for my Tandy 102 via packet radio (1200 baud on 2m) via a series of node hops (I think it was at least 5 or 6 hops at the time) from west central Minnesota to about the S.E. corner of Minnesota to BBS located there. The only thing that made it interesting is I did it in a boat on a lake outside of town, just because I could. The gear was cumbersome, but manageable at that point (round about 1989 or so). I think I downloaded a couple of songs to play via the pizo speaker and some grid square locater software.
Stupid, yet quite fun at the time.
Not quite the fun of 10m packet pile-ups on chat nodes of the peak of the sun spot cycle of the late 80's, but fun for the feeling of having done something "different" in a stupid sort of way.
This does not fit the room (QSO) as it does not involve another party at the other end (other than a sysop that cared to set things up), so I will leave it at that.
Gotta get the 6m antennas up first, though...
Netting between uncensored and dogpound2 lately is, precarious.
Works for a day, fails for several days thereafter.
So - at first - netting will be this room only until I am confident that the hams in my area will handle it responsibly.
Ultimately ham access will be to the entire bbs (normal network user).
So, IG, just what IS going on between here and dogpound2 ??
--K2NE
Experimentation is part of the hobby. It does expand the boundaries a bit and makes the unknown possible after a few attempts.
But until I see a stable networking environment (dogpound2 <-> uncensored) I'm not even going to begin thinking about it.