[Lf] Novegro Hamfest

[Andre Kesteloot]

Alberto di Bene wrote:

> Hello Group,
>     we had two nice days at the hamfest of Novegro, near Milano.
> Firstly, the weather was good, sunny, not even too cold, about
> 7 - 8 degrees Celsius.  Lot of people at the fair, and to our boot.
> We were side by side with those demonstrating the first commercial
> version of the EH antenna, so many of the visitors, after having
> heard how well it performed, and how it generates the Poynting
> vector, blatantly defying a couple of Maxwell equations, then
> came to us asking what those funny shapes on the screen stood
> for. "Is it PSK31 ?" - "No sir, it is a way of communicating on the
> LF using very slow CW, with dot length of 3 seconds and more,
> up to 60" - "Oh, I see.... but why so ? Even Marconi, when he sent
> his famous three dots, used a faster speed..."
> At this point, we had two choices : convincing him that he was the
> perfect buyer for the EH antenna, and that he could not do without one,
> or starting a long and boring explanation about S/N ratios, frequency
> analysis, time and resolution dualism, etc.
> We used one or the other approach after having "smelled" a little who
> we had in front of us. We hope to have in the two days gained a few
> new adepts for the "under the noise" world. Time will tell....
>
> The QRN was tremendous... Friday afternoon Claudio IK2PII had
> installed a loop outside the fair building, in the open, and he told me
> that evening that the noise level was quite acceptable.
> Not so on Saturday and Sunday... with hundreds of PCs and monitors
> switched on, we were unable to copy Giulio  IK2DED, who transmitted
> with 100W from his QTH less than 100km away. So it is remarkable
> that we copied, Saturday with T report and Sunday with M- report,
> Laurie G3AQC ! We copied also Valerio IK5ZPV, but his QRO
> station usually produces an aurally copyable signal at my QTH.
>
> To put an end to this long message, we are satisfied of the affluence,
> and we thank Laurie, Jim, Wolf, Valerio, Cesare, Giulio and in general
> all those who put a signal on the air during the weekend.
>
> 73  Alberto  I2PHD