Pirate Report from Dunlo, PA, USA, 1 November 2009

[Dave Valko]

11 NOVEMBER 2009: Like every weekend as of late, I was anxious to see how the new Perseus setup changes/additions were going to improve reception; the new ARR preamp, and the matching transformer built yesterday. Getting set up went relatively smoothly. It still took a while, and thankfully it wasn’t cold. I knew from testing it beforehand that the new preamp gave a lot of gain but was still surprised how much when I started. The matching transformer seemed to work well. There didn’t seem to be quite as much noise in the 48mb, but the Tropical Bands were just about as bad. When I switched to the NRD at 0845 keeping the coax lead-in, there didn’t seem to be much difference in Paardenkracht or Orion. Removing the coax and attaching the BOG straight into the high Z input didn’t make much difference either. After about 15 minutes, I switched back over to the Perseus and went out to move the BOG back (with coax lead-in). By the time I returned and started listening, no Pirates were heard. I then tried connecting a ground from the ground on the preamp to the Jeep and saw the noise go down about 10 db. Unfortunately the signal levels went down a bit as well. Without grounding, there was a lot of ADC Clipping. But with any attenuation level, there were a lot of images every 10 khz (none without attenuation). I would have thought it would have been just the other way around. It didn’t make sense. Maybe the long ground wire disconnected at the steering column (but still connected to the preamp ground) was somehow helping to create the images. Propagation conditions were poor again this weekend. The field hasn’t completely settled from the mid-week increased solar activity (solar flux was up to 86). The MUF was down to 5 mhz in an area over the north Atlantic, almost in-line with Europe. There was a decent amount of fading too. All-in-all, the propagation conditions were disappointing. But it appears there is some progress with the addition of the preamp and new matching transformer.

RX: Microtelecom Perseus SDR, JRC NRD-535D
ANT: 315' at 50° Beverage (BOG)
QTH: Pennsylvania State Game Lands #26
Duration: 0705-0930 (app.) UTC
Solar Indices: Solar Flux = 75 A Index = 1 K Index = 0
WX: Partly cloudy and Moonlit. Cool, around 40° F. (5° C.)

6290 R. Borderhunter Carrier came on at 0732:32. Brief tone, dead air, then possibly mx weakly at 07:33. Seemed mx turned up at 0740. Venga Boys at 0745. 0745 ID “Good morning. You’re listening to the Borderhunterâ€

[bart]

Hello Dave thank You for the reports and also from Paardenkracht.
Iam suprise Dave heard me now feel here happy
THANK YOU!!!!!
All the best and greetings Paardenkracht and Bart

[JoJo]

Hello Dave, thanks for the log, much appreciated. Nice test I see, Guess the result was not what you expect from it? Maybe with better conditions; anyway great to read the reports

[Radio Scotland]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for reporting!
On 6306 i tried to put the BIG L stream on air, but the pc don't like the SW TX..
The music went on and off, that's what you heard to!
Did the same thing on MW, and no probleme at all overthere.
Strange: in the past the pc was working well as the SW TX was on air.

Greetings, Albert.