7 May 2012

10m across the pond

Late this afternoon I was very surprised when my 5W to the halo was spotted on 10m WSPR by K9AN 6505km west of me. It is unusual, I think, to get 10m transatlantic propagation at this time of the year by F2, so wonder if this was Es propagation? There were quite strong PY stations coming through earlier, so it could be F2 back-scatter. Incidentally, 4X1RF and I seem to have a pipe between us on 10m: we WSPR spot each other most days and I often copy him when his beacon is running 50mW.

Further to my earlier post, WSPR allows one to do "gentleman's DXing": you can see how far your signal is reaching whilst running QRP and a simple antenna and still do other things in the shack at the same time. Perfect.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

5W on WSPR is quite high power. I hardly run more than 0.2W, also with a simple antenna (folded dipole) and K/VK/ZL is relatively easy with a small lift in propagation.
Concerning 4x1RF.. I think he has a v.good setup.. he always blasts in here, with close to 0dB on the WSPR scale (whatever that means!) and he also runs low power 0.5W. The propagation is very interesting to track with WSPR.. the propagation here (Paris) usually follows the same pattern as SW England than further East of France and Germany. Why? I do not know... Seems to be a 'Belgium' wall. Hope to catch you on WSPR! Regards, and good luck with the light exoeriments (by the way, the refraction close to the horison can be very significant!!) G6AIG Hugh

Unknown said...

I also seem to have a direct line to 4X1RF.

I use 5W because I think it is more interesting to use a power level that indicates the possibility of making an SSB QSO.