A Night at the Opera


Oh, alright then: A Night at the 'Part 5' 'watering hole' , at and around 137.780kHz. This was at the beginning of October, not exactly 'high noon' for propagation or storm-noise, but is pretty representative of the activity in late 2005. Taken with a non-directional antenna, an Icom IC-R75 receiver, and my daughter's laptop (but she doesn't know it yet).

Four 'Argo' snapshots taken overnight.







Late evening, and the usual suspects (at least from an east-coast standpoint) have checked-in. Top to bottom: WD2XGJ and WD2XES, Massachussets; WD2XKO, North Carolina; 'MP' from VE3OT, Ontario; WD2XDW, Oklahoma.







What a difference a few hours makes: as a whole signals are much louder, with 'dogbones' abounding. (These are the bright vertical blotches at the beginnings and ends of keyed elements; as with all multiplicative artifacts, they are more obvious as signals increase in strength; think of them as 'key clicks'.) Note now the visibility at 137.777kHz of 'NA', VO1NA, Newfoundland. For some reason, Europeans see Joe more easily than I do.







New arrival just below 137.778kHz: 'LF', as in VA7LF. This was Steve VE7SL and Scott VE7TIL revving up their rig for attempted contact with ZM2E, NewZealand a day or two later.







Daylight. WD2XES switched off, WD2WDW faded out as mutual darkness went away, leaving XGJ, XKO and MP as groundwave bedfellows.




© Steve Dove, W3EEE, 2003