A few related experimental thoughts....
Improving the performance of my QCX+ on 40m in WSPR beacon mode is a goal of mine. Over the past month, you've seen the blog posts here. I started by doing a simple tune up of my antenna (or so I thought), then transmitting during a time when propagation was expected to be poor due to a geomagnetic storm. I got the expected poor performance.
The next evening, i changed nothing and turned the radio on. I started getting better spots, but nothing amazing.
The third night I ran the experiment, I got my Nano VNA out and spent about 20 minutes tweaking the controls on the MFJ-941E to get the best match possible.
I should have realized something was up, because while this wire is usually difficult to tune on 40m, it was being especially so.
Hmmmmm
in the mean time, while I was waiting on spots to trickle in, I heated up the soldering station and wound some iron donuts for the QRP Labs QDX I bought a little while ago.
This radio will feature in my efforts to get on the air as a Park activator in Parks On The Air. It's 5 bands, and does many digital modes including RTTY, and FT-8. My plan is to build a shack in a box, with the QDX, my QCXs, and at least one Raspberry Pi running some sort of radio software. Eventually I'll move from the QCXs and change them to a QMX+. More research and saving is needed!
Consider hitting the paypal donate button above, and label it "QMX fund" :D
or just send me new Yaesu FTX-1 "Field" . that would be good too.
After installing a couple iron donuts, I checked the spotting network, and saw not much.
I decided to look a little closer, starting with the antenna wire, tracing the signal backwards so to speak.
- The antenna is still in the air
- it comes inside
- it's plugged into the tuner.
- in the wrong spot
I had the wire hooked into a coax plug, not the long wire plug of the tuner.
that means I tuned the tuner to NO ANTENNA. and I still got SOME spots.
not as many as I should, but there you had it.
After correcting that minor issue, I had a lot more fun getting spots.
I set the beacon on, and let it run over night, getting a lot better results.
From:
To:
to:
To Finally:
worldwide on 40m WSPR!
Five watts to an end fed antenna about 85 feet long.
One of the things I've tried to teach my kids over the years is "you're never too broke to pay attention". That day, I learned that lesson again.
first transmission was easily picked up!