Saturday, August 10, 2013

New Season Approaching

And with it comes antenna preparations. The first beverage out was the 500 meter, 50 degrees Asia/Pacific beverage. It has been an exceptionally quiet antenna in the past, but last autumn we noticed noise coming and going. It only periodically disturbed DX-ing though. However this was the spectrum that met me after I connected yesterday:
Afternoon spectrum
Of course, this was not good. The noise band seemed to come and go at rather random intervals so I was relatively sure it was not man-made. Getting a good grounding at the starting point has proven to be a bit tricky, so I decided to investigate this lead first. Equipped with a sledge hammer, extra copper rods and leads I reworked the grounding system with four rods into the rather stony ground. When I got back I found this spectrum:
Daytime spectrum
Now we're talking! This is just about as quiet as it can get. You will notice the horisontal lines on parts of the spectrum. It's Loran C noise, and reducing it any more than I have already done isn't possible without switching off the station.

Despite the noise yesterday evening, I was able to hear DX as several Japanese MW stations were audible with good levels, especially JOHR HBC Sapporo 1287.

To round this off, a couple of pictures of the starting point and how the antenna stretches towards the shore on the other end.
Mostly rocky soil, grounding is difficult

Last 300 meters towards New Zealand :-)

2 comments:

Chuck said...

Bjarne - Is it possible to put an entire 2 meter (more or less) ground rod into your rocky soil?

Chuck

Bjarne Mjelde said...

Chuck: Maybe...if 1) it's a copper clad steel rod, and 2) you have a machine to hammer it down. You'll need a lot of force so a copper-only rod will probably bend.