An evening's listening.

As ex-tropical storm Gabrielle gave way to clearing skies this evening, I spent an hour (17:52-18:52UT) listening on 14MHz WSPR from the car by the sea.

Once again, the results with a simple, and very cheap whip vertical were excellent.  Of 17, US stations heard regularly, the coastal location yielded a modal enhancement, relative to my full wave 14MHz delta loop, of 7dB, or a power factor of 5.

That sounds quite modest, until you look at the range, which is from 14.5dB to 1dB, or a power factor of between 28 and 1.25 times.  The highest enhancement was to the signals from the best DX stations of AA7FV and K5XL, at 8147 and 7315km, respectively. 

Lovely sunset, and great results!

With the new ICOM portable all-band transceiver now adding to the still fairly limited range of field-portable rigs, this and my other results clearly show the way in getting the very most out of the 10-15W such rigs typically produce at their higher settings.

At 10W into a simple vertical within a few tens of metres of the sea (and not 'feet wet' style, which is probably even better, but a lot less convenient), you could be effectively putting out 280W in the direction of the sea.  Or, looking at it another way, 56W ERP from dialling-in just 2W on your rig!

If you think those claims are somehow special or unachievable in practice, have a look around the internet for those who operate pedestrian mobile by the sea, or listen to how they have 5/9 SSB QSOs with VK and ZL on a few Watts, whilst you can't even hear those stations!


And remember, this was just a one hour test!  The results around greyline time in the morning to the antipodes are certain to be impressive.  One morning, I'll get around to it.  Until then, here's what you can do with half a Watt or less: