Let's go to the West Coast!

Having found good results yesterday down at the north coast of Anglesey, I decided to place my mobile whip in a position with a wider aspect to the Atlantic for 14MHz WSPR reception.

So, off I went to the west coast of Anglesey, down a little-known, single track road that eventually took me to a small cove, the sea being just metres away.

Already very autumnal.  Looking out west over the Irish Sea.

This is not 'at the surf' operating, where the antenna is less than half a wavelength from the water.  That's a lot of effort, and becomes increasingly impractical and uncomfortable in poor weather.  The water is roughly between 10 and 40 metres away, depending on the tide.

The open horizon to the west was certainly a big improvement over my previous location for US stations being heard by my simple mobile whip.  Here are the results of 21 reception cycles at 14MHz:

Now, the mobile whip yields a median 4.5dB better receive signal than the full wave delta loop located at 300 feet amsl, on top of a copper mine!

Undeniably, simply being by the sea, with a clear environment, is enormously beneficial, even in a car with the simplest of antennas.  Even JA9TTT comes in stronger, where the path is presumably from the east, behind the coast. That may be a hint that lower noise, rather than stroger singals, is the cause of the good performance from the whip, althouth I have managed number 1 in the WSPR DX listening challenge from home more than once. 

At 18:54UT, I sent a single, 1W WSPR transmission.  I chose N2HQI as a good receiver, who reported the following results at around that time.  Note the strange, multiple reception reports for my station (note also that with the old WSPRnet database interface, you can display way more results than with the new one, which is limited to just 999 spots):

If we take -5dB as my report, then that puts me 11dB above G0CCL, itself a top-performing station.