It was only 07:30UT when I got down there, and still pretty dark, made worse by heavy cloud cover and a 90km/h wind (oh, and by the Conservatives winning the general election overnight!)
At this time of year, at that time of day, and with the solar cycle at rock-bottom, I wasn't expecting an awful lot of success with 'real' QSOs.
But I was wrong! I was getting strong 14MHz FT8 and FT4 QSOs from my 20W to a Ampro stick antenna with stations in Asiatic Russia right from the start. These QSOs do not occur until about 90 minutes later when I am at home, using a full-sized delta loop.
Curiously, and perhaps because of the /M extension, PSKreporter was showing only a very small number of spots for my signal, which is a shame.
A very brief session of WSPR then ensued. The first thing one always notices at the beach when tuning to WSPR is just how piercingly loud many of the received signals are.
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| Above: a handful of 14MHZ, 1W WSPR transmissions from the beach. |
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| ZL3JE's reception at the time (3 hour span). Note how small location differences in the UK yield vastly different paths. |
ZL3JE was receiving only three stations from the UK at the time. The table below lets you see how well a stick on top of the car performs at the beach, but in short, I was 5-13dB stronger than the other two stations (note that G0CCL increases to 20W output at 09:08UT). G0CCL has a vertical monopole with a whole metal sheet factory complex as a ground plane. MW0ATK has a windom, according to his WSPR page.
What's the point of repeatedly banging on about how good /M or /P operating can be? Easy: the equipment is cheap, quick to deploy, and very, very effective (a stick antenna down the beach is likely to be as good as, or better than, a 3-ele Yagi at a more inland location). If you have too much RFI locally, just move somewhere else! If you have bad neighbours and/or local authorities, forget arguing with them all and go down the local beach or up a hilltop. It's just so much easier, so less stressful.
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