A few minutes from the car park.

Very slowly, I'm continuing to get back on the air, albeit in a very different way to the past ten years.

A week after moving in to our new home, I've managed to get a magnetic loop up and running on 200mW WSPR, which did very well, once I'd lilfted it 1.5m off the ground.  Plenty more work to do there to weather-proof everything. 

Other than that, it's a case of pulling-in with the car at various convenient points as I go about daily chores.  This afternoon, I simply stopped at a car park with a nice clear aspect in all directions.  Nothing special at all, other than being a few hundred metres from the sea, which wasn't visible.  Even though there were many houses within ~100m, the RF noise levels were extremely low.

I was pleasantly surprised to find my 1W WSPR from the 14MHz Ampro stick on the car was getting across to KL7L at a very competitive signal strength; at -22dB, I was second amongst the other few British stations making it across at the time.  

Not bad for a few minutes' 14MHz 1W WSPRing from a car park!

 

G6GN, using a Fuchs antenna, was beating me by a healthy 4dB.  G0IDE was way down at -29dB for a 1W equivalent.  Even the excellent station, G0CCL, was down at -28dB for a 1W equivalent.  G7JGB and MM0IYT, the remaining ones making it to KL7L from Britain, were down at -32dB and -27dB/1W equivalent, respectively.

For a run-of-the-mill operating position and the simplest antenna going, that was a very good outcome, and I hope it encourages those who can't, or don't want to operate from a home location, to have a go at /P and/M work.  It's a lot less hassle than keeping big wires and/or towers in the air, that's for sure!