When All Else Fails There is Always WSPR (tm)

We woke up on Wednesday 6th of January to the aftermath of the worst period of snow since 1981, though we may we may be set for a winter that challenges 1963. Not surprisingly some of us had to revert to Internet TV or a poor analogue signal.



As Wednesday is a club night we QSYed from Hut 18 to the airwaves. Our initial attempt was to work each other on 80m, but skip conditions such that most stations were very weak, indeed Derek, G3GRO one of the most powerful stations on the net was barely audible at G3YSX (Merstham) and was only 50% copyable in Crawley Down (G3VLH). However we did QSY to GB3WS where we had a most enjoyable net for about an hour. Indeed this was so enjoyable that a number of members have suggested trying again to establish a club net.

After the session on GB3WS a number of us tried again on HF, this time on 20m. Again the paths losses were unacceptably high. It will be interesting to try this again when there is less snow on the ground (and on the trees) and when the antennas are less covered in ice to see how much effect the weather was having on the signal paths.

The pictures below show the ice buildup on my antenna systems.



The VHF antenna did well considering the amount of ice that coated it. Note that the long wire used on 80m and 20m was also iced up earlier in the day.



This is the ice on the long-wire at the top of the vertical feed.



... and this is the ice on the bottom. The remote ATU lives in the dustbin to give it additional weather protection.

However the Wednesday 6th January was a period of special activity on 80m for WSPR, and I always try to take part in these special activity sessions. The poor results on the club net HF net struck me as being an interesting contrast to the results I was getting that day on 80m using WSPR. For this activity I was running about 2.5W from my FT-817 to the same long-wire antenna and ATU.

Here is the 24hr plot I got for 80m WSPR taken at 1317 the following day:



The best DX (that heard me) in the log was W5OLF (7720 Km), KV6O (7633 Km) and AL2F (7401 Km). However there were close in contacts for example M0JEK (57 Km), G3THQ (34 Km), and G8VDQ (30 Km) which were at a comparable distance to the CARC evening net. The G3THQ contact ocuring about an hour before the club net. There were just over 190 contacts in the log. By sorting the contacts into distance order and assuming that the pairs at the same distance represent a two way contact (a very rough, but reasonable accurate approximation) I estimate that I made 71 two way contacts.

I know that this is an apples to oranges comparison, but the antenna was the same (including most of the ice) and the power WSPR power (about 2.5W) was about 19db down on my SSB signal, and it is interesting to compare the relative effectiveness of the two modes.

Stewart/G3YSX