10m 5mW WSPR so far

After beaconing at 5mW WSPR on 10m all afternoon, I have received not a single spot so far.

20dB attenuator directly on 500mW output of FT817 (note chokes on ground side)

I have copied many stateside stations today and yesterday. On Monday morning my 5mW 10m beacon as spotted by 4X1RF at 3519km, a new 5mW DX record for me. RX reports suggest reception in N.America of the 5mW beacon might  be possible, but no luck as yet.

10m WSPR spots, 5mW TX and RX via 20dB pad

40m 5mW Summary

After leaving the 5mW 40m WSPR beacon running for 24 hours, this is the summary.

In all I received 7 spots in that period with the best DX being a single report from Italy and a couple of reports from Denmark.

In all, quite an interesting exercise with very low power.  Clearly  my signal was sitting in the noise most of the time, being just over the noise floor on a few rare occasions for very small number of stations. I am convinced that 2W RF is a better level to aim for in any dedicated WSPR beacon. Even with a 20dB pad in series with the FT817 output, I was still copying stations from near and far including VK6XT on 40m. On TX it was much harder to be copied.

 40m 5mW WSPR spots received

Still, with my modest, low, 40m antenna 1183km is not bad with just 5mW. See later post about 10m results.