19 Feb 2015

First 160m spots on earth-electrode "antenna"

PA3MET (325km) was the first station received on 160m today.  It is still daylight (will be for hours yet) so I assume this is normal daytime propagation.   S/N varied from -17dB at best to -28dB at worse. PA3MET was running 20W, which is high for WSPR.

As it is obviously working, I'll start 160m WSPR TX with 2.5W from the FT817 very shortly.

UPDATE 1405z:  GW0OAJ (240km) has just been spotted here on 160m WSPR RX at -28dB S/N. He is using 5W.

UPDATE 1430z:  G4FKK (106km) spotted.   He is running 100mW but not sure if this is ERP.  Have now turned on the 160m TX (20%).

UPDATE 1500z:   No spots yet of my 2.5W from the FT817 on 160m WSPR so far today.

UPDATE 1604z:  Apparently  G8LCO copied me at -28dB S/N but the WSPRnet database was down, so did not receive the report.  My best DX on RX so far is DF2JP (448km).

UPDATE 1612z:    Best DX on 160m WSPR RX today is now OZ7IT (853km). It is still daylight for another 2 hours here.

UPDATE 1712z:  I see that GW0OAJ (240km) and G8LCO (58km) both spotted me at 1650z, so the earth-electrodes work on 160m WSPR TX.

UPDATE 1750z:  I see now that  ON7KO (295km) is spotting me at -23dB S/N.   And it is only now getting dark!  So far, results on 160m with the earth-electrode "antenna" are encouraging.

UPDATE 1900z:   Best DX on 160m WSPR RX so far with the earth-electrode "antenna" is RX3DHR (2533km).

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