40m Beach test.

A nice starry evening after loads of rain tonight.  Ideal to try 40m at the beach with the new Ampro!

Just me and the lights of the ships going to Liverpool.

 

I couldn't lower the SWR below about 1.5:1 just by adjusting the stainless steel whip.  Whilst I could use the TS480's ATU, I don't really like to use that unless it's for a much smaller correction to the matching.

Night-time shunt coil test, which worked nicely to bring the matching under control.

 

By now, I have a real mobile shack - everything, including a ready-made shunt coil and connectors - is sitting somewhere on the back seat, in the glove compartments, or in the boot!  I added this at the base and: voila!  A 1:1 match out of the box, without any adjusting of the coil!  The whole thing is quite narrow banded, but that's fine with almost fixed-frequency digimodes.

It's really nice working /P at night.  Nobody around, owls and seabirds making their respective noises, stars in the sky, and that warm glow from the radio display that pulls the mind into all those far-away places from which the signals are arriving - just like the good old days of SW valve sets!

Back to the modern world, the FT8 signals at 15W looked pretty good:

I then went to WSPR at 1W.  This worked exceptionally well from the beach.  Here's VK3KHZ's receptions either side of my being heard, where, as you can see, no other UK station was making it across to him at all.  Taking a detection limit of -34dB for WSPR, this result suggests I'm getting at least a 10-14dB enhancement over any other UK station:

Next, VK5ATN/B, where I was again the only UK station getting across.  This suggests at least an 8dB gain over other UK stations:

And finally,VK2OB, where only G4NEY and I were getting across.  I think he uses a dipole.  I'm getting only 3dB over him, but his set up must be very good to be the only other G station making it, and we must be at least 11dB better than other stations in the country for them not to be heard: