Someone remarked to me that I copied far more on 472kHz than he did. As you may recall I am just using a totally unmodified FT817 that is a bit deaf on MF with the earth electrode "antenna". I have to use my PC on battery power to ensure a low noise floor, but I do seem to copy quite a bit. Last night my best DX on RX was
LA8AV (1035km) and I went QRT at bedtime.
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| Unique spots last evening on 472kHz WSPR RX |
good afternoon Roger,
ReplyDelete630m / 472kHz is an interesting band. I don't as yet transmit there but I do monitor WSPR.
I have been using my FT-950 which like many radios has an attenuator that turns on below the AM broadcast band. Even so, I have had good luck receiving spots from all over North America and the Caribbean. This all using my WOF (wire on fence) antenna. This is a variation of Dallas Lankford's low noise vertical but I have instead run the antenna wire along a plastic / wooden fence about 5 to 6 feet off the ground in a L shape with a total of approximately 65 feet of wire. My antenna feeds a Norton amplifier with about 10dB gain which in turn feeds a multicoupler ( 1 in 4 out modified Pelco DA104 video distribution amplifier). This has proven to be about the best general purpose receive antenna I have ever had, favours the lower bands but still quite useable up to and above 15m.
I report on wsprnet as ve3ghm, if interested you can see my 472kHz spots here:
http://wsprnet.org/olddb?mode=html&band=2190&limit=500&findcall=&findreporter=ve3ghm&sort=date&unique=on
cheers, Graham ve3gtc / ve3ghm