[Lf] [Fwd: LF: 73 T/A Last night]

[Andre Kesteloot]

g3ldo wrote:

> Although from the receiving end watching 120s QRSS on 72.4kHz is like
> watching grass grow at the transmitting end it turned out to be fairly
> exciting.
>
> I had not studied the propagation predictions and I just tagged along with
> Laurie. I was late because of a family emergency and I didn't get the
> transmitter fired up until 2335, by which time it would seem that main
> propagation event had faded.
> This was the first time the car battery power supply was used and it proved
> much more resilient than the UPS batteries. There was a bit of a panic when
> I found that the DDS driver batteries were down to 10v but a quick
> connection of a charger resolved this.
> My main concern was for the antenna. I managed to improve the antenna
> current to 4.5amps and with an antenna feed point of 64ohms this works out
> at around 1300watts. With a small suburban antenna the voltage across the
> insulators must be enormous. After anxiously inspecting the insulators in
> the dark for pyrotechnics all looked well in spite of the heavy rain that
> had started to fall. It would seem that the insulator treatment, described
> previously, seemed to have done the trick. But there was no chance of
> leaving the transmitter on and going to bed as I think Laurie does.
> By 0130 no T/A reports had been received and I was ready to pack up.
> Fortunately I did a last check of the e-mail and got a report from John,
> which encouraged me to leave the transmitter on for a while.
> It seems that the propagation followed the familiar pattern of two broad
> humps seen so often in Alan's CFH recordings and so a complete 'LDO' was
> received in MA.
> Many thanks to Jose EA1PX and Markus DF6NM for their reports on frequency
> and signal strength.
> Most of all, thanks to John Andrews, W1TAG, for his patience in receiving
> the signals from Laurie and myself and for making the ARGO recordings
> available on his website.
>
> Regards,
> Peter, G3LDO
>
> e-mail <g3ldo at ukonline.co.uk>
>
> Web <http://web.ukonline.co.uk/g3ldo>