12m at the beach

Well, my wife and daughter wanted a swim in the sea last evening.  So I came along to play some radio on dry land!

I was meant to be comparing reception at the beach with a vertical using FT8, and my 3-element LFA at home.  Unfortunately, simply by checking the ALL.txt file at home, the software stopped recording reception reports!  It seems one has to stop and restart WSJT-X after interrogating the ALL file.

Anyhow, all not lost.  Reception was very strong from Latin America, up in positive SNR territory, even for the most distant stations.  My ~3W even managed to reach LU8ENU, albeit at a meagre -17dB.  At CU2CE, in the Azores, I was a much healthier -2dB.  Of course, with Es propagation, the sea doesn't necessarily provide the same enhancement as lower down on HF, because it depends on the position of the first Es cloud.