Wednesday, February 04, 2015

New tactic

I arrived home from our Technician License class with 40 minutes left in the 40 Meter QRP Fox hunt. Much to my dismay, there was an S7 noise level across the entire band.- so that was a total bust. Sometimes, I wish I had one of those magical red buttons, whereby pressing it,  I could kill the power to all the houses in the neighborhood (including mine, because I can run the KX3 from batteries!) and eliminate that kind of problem. Just for an hour or so, nothing permanent!

30 Meters had no such noise problem, so I spent another fruitless hour trying to chase K1N.  The pileups are so big that they are beyond the KX3's "Dual Watch" capabilities. Trying to quickly scan the pileup, in an attempt to discover just where K1N is listening is a bit of a nightmare.  I suppose if I had a PX3, it would be a lot easier - but that solution is beyond my fiscal capabilities at this time.

So I've decided to try another tactic. I wake up every morning at 5:00 AM. Normally, I sit with Harold (our Beagle) for a bit to give him some companionship before everyone leaves for the day - leaving him alone. But tomorrow, I may even get up a bit earlier and will head straight to the shack.  Maybe at 4:00 AM, I might have better luck.

I better make sure I get some coffee first, though. Unleashing W2LJ on the bands without some coffee might actually make things worse. Although listening to the pileup behavior has me convinced that even my worst accidental behavior can't be as bad as what some idiots are doing deliberately.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP -When you care to send the very least!

3 comments:

  1. Reading elsewhere it appears that the 40m interference was down to another of these darned Over the Horizon radars.

    Dave
    M6DFA

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  2. Really? Thanks, Dave - didn't know that. I'll need a larger red button, then. ;-)

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  3. Being up way early in the morning has been my secret to working K1N on the low bands -- pileups are a lot more reasonable when most sensible people are still asleep...

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