Average

I got a few e-mails about the coppertape vertical and see now that I forgot to make more important photos from the building process. Anyway, I tried to make some close ups from the connection of the coppertape to the tuner. You clearly see the wire that is connecting the radiator I hope...It's so simple and you think everyone would know this but it seems not to be clear. It is electricity wire we use in the Netherlands, a insulated solid insulated copperwire. I took 7,5 meters of it and stripped 7,1 meters. I left 40 cm with insulation and that is the part you see. The rest is on the coppertape which is sticked on the antenna in one piece covered finally with insulation tape.


I'm busy testing my rebuilt vertical with 1W WSPR TX and RX with the Yaesu FT-817. I started on 20m and was there for 48 hours this week. Challenging as the sunspot number was zero. A good time to test a antenna RX and compare results with your fellow radioamateurs. You can compare your results on PE1ITR's experimental WSPR challenge site. I was on 20m 27-28th but strange enough my call didn't appear in the table from the 28th. On the 27th I got a average result of 146 unique calls received which left me on place 23 from 50. However only fellow dutch receiver PI4THT did receive more unique calls.


Distance is a difficult thing from the Netherlands. Distant signals seem to be
covered by strong european signals which are nearby. However my total was 251567km. Only one fellow dutch receiver did have more luck, it was PA0MLC with 263290km. PI4THT was, strange enough, not in this list. It puzzles me as PI4THT received much more unique stations but I guess the DX was covered with too many signals from nearby for this station.

Now let's look at the TX side. This is a plot of 48h on 20m at the 27-28th.

No Australia, no South America, no Africa. But at least some spots from Japan with best DX 9121km. Even one spot from the west coast USA. Unfortenately I can't find a 1W station from the Netherlands in the same time period. Comparisation is difficult. Since propagation is not too good and without any sunspots I think the results are reasonable. Not really good and not really bad. Average is the good word for it.

At the moment I'm testing on 30m. I've not decided what the next band will be. A final antenna shot:

It is always nice to experiment with only a few things at hand. This time of the year I haven't got much time to play with radio. But WSPR is doing the job and keeps you on-air.