G4KPX

If you get a chance, look at the WSPR spots for Richard G4KPX. Unless he has made recent changes Richard uses QRP with indoor loop antennas and achieves excellent results on every band he uses. For example, his 0.5W 10m log includes a couple of VKs and a good array of stateside stations.  Even on 472kHz he achieves good results.

An INDOOR loop on 472kHz TX?

Over the last few days I have been receiving quite strong WSPR signals on 472kHz from Richard G4KPX who is in Ely, some 14km north east of me.  Looking on the WSPR database I see he has been copied up to 573km on the band using WSPR. Now, in a email from Richard today he revealed his secret: he is using just 1W RF into an indoor 3m x 2m single turn loop made of 10mm pipe leaning against the wall of his spare bedroom!  The EIRP is at most 100uW and probably a lot less because of the losses with mounting it where he does and the capacitors used to resonate it. This is a pretty amazing set of results.

Richard has been spotted across the Atlantic on 160m using the same indoor antenna and has similar magnetic loop antennas for all HF bands I believe.

So, if you believe you have no space for an MF band TX antenna, and you don't even have a garden to put a couple of earth-electrodes in the ground, you could always follow Richard's example.

Some months ago I believe one of the German 136kHz stations (DF6NM?) tried something similar using a large coax as a big indoor loop on 136kHz and also got some quite decent results. Never say you cannot erect an antenna!  What you need is a bit of ingenuity.

More WSPR database issues today

28MHz WSPR this afternoon - loads of signals

Sadly this afternoon the internet WSPR database crashed again, just at a time when 10m propagation was excellent and some decent reports were coming in from the USA and elsewhere with my 50mW to the halo. All afternoon I was getting an endless string of DX stations coming through on WSPR all running 5W or much less but I have been unable to upload these to the database or get my own reports from it. I noticed G4KPX about 15km away from me was testing on 10m WSPR with 5mW and I am sure he would have been getting plenty of DX reports in today's conditions. Let's hope the database is back soon so I can upload spots manually and see what reports I was getting in the last few hours.