Broke it so soon?
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Broke it so soon?
No stuffed animal for you tonight. Only the hose.
Decided to make a modification: Pulled the screwdriver off the second antenna (performs like crap) and put up a 2m loop and a 220 beam:
Attachment 15830
And..... the propagation across the lake it for crap right now:
Attachment 15831
Things just banged wide open on the great lakes on 2 meter... gosh what fun!!
Attachment 15834
Ducting?
I assume... the propagation distance was not long enough to indicate sporadic e.
There were some links on APRS up to 400mi. But I'd expect over 1000mi for sporadic e.
Most of the digipeaters I rely on to observe propagation are large tower affairs with a lot of gain. So if I'm seeing 200 miles- I can usually get into Chicago.
So far, my favorite VHF contact was France on the magic band, CW in the SSB calling frequency 50.125, QRP full 5 watts, 50 Mhz LPDA, aimed North. Obvious multi hop. I had more fun on the magic band than others. The local, and scatter propagation made weak signal contacts doable, and fun!. I liked chatting simplex fm with the locals as well. I was (still have transformers) putting a 1200W repeater together, an old retired motorola. I has looking for someone who could re-tune the cavities. I was (maybe still am) challenging the coordinated frequency pairs being squatted on by old geezers who were arrl friends of friends who were not even operating an active repeater. I still have dreams of a very high profile 6M repeater with simulcast connectivity to other systems, and cross band links. I do not want to see the magic band get sold to the highest bidder like a chunck of 220 was!