Friday, April 24, 2015

Another WSPR DXCC hunt.

Had a very stressful moment this morning when I saw on this weblog I was QRV on 12m with the FT817 instead of 10m which I setup early in the morning before leaving home. Luckely my station can be remotely accessed so I did correct the trx frequency with HRD. But then....how many times has the FT817 been transmitting with a high SWR? I cannot see if the FT817 has actual power output through the remote connection. So I had to wait till I got a spot from PA0O which is the nearest station on WSPR here. Luckely around 7:22 he did finally spot me so I have a signal on the air. Now I had to wait till 16 UTC to see if VP8ALJ would spot my 1 Watt WSPR signal to get DXCC 78. At the end of the day I finally had time to view the data collected on WSPRnet, no VP8. It seems he was not active on 10 today. I was not received by any new DXCC at all. Although on the other side late in the evening WSPR-X I did see a 5W signal from ZL2IT with -20dB on long path, most interesting! Time to test the path with WSJT-X and called CQ on JT9 with almost no results, only spots from LU. Although JT65 was full of signals, even Japan on long path. A fast QSO with CX7BBR (+11000 km, -10dB report) with 5W proved the path is good. But no ZL unfortenately. Then I saw VP8ALJ was active on 15m WSPR, not my best band but tried my luck. First spot I received on 15 was VP8ALJ with a massive -13dB. Unfortenately WSPR-X is not very reliable here and that was the only and last spot the program did. Although there actually were a lot of signals in the waterfall. So I switched over to the old WSPR 2.0 which has proven it's reliable. I don't know why but the old version does a better job. And yes, the next transmission I was finally received by VP8ALJ with -22dB. WSPR DXCC nr. 78 is in the log!

4 comments:

Blogmaster said...

Well done Bas! Hopefully the FT-817 didn't suffer too badly with the high SWR.

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, die is binnen. Ik ga ook eens kijken of ik hem te pakken kan krijgen. 73 Paul

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Luckely there seems to be no damage. I had the set on 1W only as that is max. power I use on WSPR. It probabely saved the final. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, ja dit was geen moeilijke eigenlijk maar je moet wel even de activity lijst checken. Ik zie nu KP4MD gemeld op 10m. Heb ik ook nog niet,,,dus het jagen gaat weer verder. 73, Bas