Derek Moore is in danger of being flattened by a
pileup on 20m and a herd of stampeding wildebeest...
Namibia should be very accessible according to
the prop charts - it's just that the Wildebeest don't have class
A licenses so Derek is the Big game, with just one other regualr
from the country (v51ww).
... major pileup!
And this was from the session where I got through; typically I stopped recording because Derek
announced he was going QRT, but then he actually managed to squeeze me
in!
Namiba called....
I have heard Derek many times and generally
not bothered to join the pile up, but I made the effort today
and was about to give up again as he had announced he was off
for dinner ... and I snuck in.
It's
interesting to see how the propagation has changed from May to
August.
The availability of enough MUF is of course is
required, and generally it's only 14MHz at the present time.
Today has been exceptional.
The DX
Doctor is in:
May 1st 2017 on the left:
A big enough signal but bass
heavy - no LF roll-off, and going all the way down to below 100Hz.
Listen on the recording from 3m44sec where I
experiment with bottom end filter, and take it up to 300Hz and see how
much crisper it all sounds.
August 27th 2017 on the right: Still bass heavy for crisp comms ....
...but following a sked we set
up on August 28th, Derek turned on an audio HPF with the mic,
and the comms audio quality was transformed.
This was not a particularly good path, but good enough for a sked at 18:40z
when the usual pile up Death Stars were all busily munching their paella and spaghetti
- not even enough signal for a decent spectrum image, but the
fact that I could hear every word despite the conditions proved
the point. :-)
