Although I have yet to be spotted on 6m JT65 by 4X1RF (me being vertical probably does not help!) he does spot some amazing DX on the band regularly. Every time I look I see spots by him at great distance on 6m. He only uses a 3 element according to PSKreporter - nothing too grand.
I assume these long distance spots are Es, but some could be tropo across the Med, but unlikely. I still wonder about chordal-Es as he seems to regularly spot stations a long way away. I have been spotted in Israel this summer (1W ERP) and I have spotted a station in Kazakhstan twice. Kazakhstan is a very long way!
Hi Roger,
ReplyDeleteYes, the antenna is a home made 3 el. Yagi fixed to 300deg. As a receiver I'm using an RTL-SDR dongle with a 2MHz wide band pass filter as a front end and SDR# with AGC disabled and the dongle gain to 44dB. Works great and haven't noticed any overload problems in this configuration. This way I'm able to use my IC7000 to monitor 2m for that elusive Es or tropo QSO.
Looking forward to decode your signal, don't think your signal beeing vertically polarized has any effect after one or more reflections by the ionosphere.
73 es keep trying!
Chris 4X1RF
Excellent stuff !
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info Chris, and congrats to you, Roger.
Using RTLSDR dongles is in my ideas as well, however I need to improve my antenna system before autumn/winter.
Vy 73 de Jan, OZ9QV