Category: NDB

CLE 206 and an antenna upgrade

CLE 206 was an interesting time. I used the active antenna exclusively this time and was quite pleased with the reception.

I was not as pleased with the propagation on Friday night. For most of the night I was hearing my “big guns” (UAB, ZKI, PR and YD) but not much more. I was not convinced that this was an antenna problem because I could hear WT (Wrigley NT) as well. Later in the evening (morning?) I started to hear the weaker ones. I went to bed having logged all my previous signals between 190 KHz and 239.9 KHz and a new one for me, 206-EF (Castlegar, BC CAN).

Saturday night I stayed up later and picked up some new ones. I managed to hear most of the Alaska signals as they came up. The fun part of the night was spending time digging out two or more signals on the same frequency. I learned a lot about IC-7000 IF and audio filters … using tight bandwidths and the filter roll-off slope to remove one signal and hear the other.

It was raining on Sunday and so it was perfect for antenna work! I placed the active antenna in it’s permanent enclosure and raised it another 3 meters or so (10 feet).

 

Signals appear stronger but that could be wishful thinking.

EDIT: Great signals a few days after CLE 206 … hearing longer and fainter signals. A grand total of 32 new ones on April 27, 2016!

Active antenna testing

I finished my active antenna this afternoon and stuck it on top of a 3 meter pole to see if it would work (to start with) and be an improvement (a bonus).

 

Since it was still daylight, the only NDB I could hear was the strong local (YD Smithers, 78 km). It was the same signal strength on both my HF-2V and the active antenna at S7. It passed the first test … it works. No more testing this afternoon as I have to go to town.

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04:00z

After returning from town just as dusk was falling I wanted to see if the more distant stations I had heard on my vertical on previous nights would be audible on the new active antenna. After much fumbling around with questionable adapters I could hear the louder NDB stations (300 km or so) but no distant ones were audible yet. Time to wait for full dark.

…

05:00z

An NDB station I had heard only once some weeks ago … briefly audible above the noise … was 8C, Fairview Alberta (585 km). I had no problem picking it up tonight as it was quite a bit above the noise floor. For comparison, I switched back to the HF-2V where I had heard it before and it was gone … the noise had completely swallowed the signal. Nothing I could do with IF or audio filters could dig it out. Back to the active antenna and 509 (no measurable signal but excellent readability and clarity of tone).

Unfortunately (fortunately?) my noise level with either antenna is quite a bit below S zero so I cannot give any comparative numbers. What I can say is that signals that were in the noise and barely readable before are clearly audible now. The noise level is significantly lower on the active antenna. I don’t need as narrow a filter to achieve the same results as before. Narrowing the filter will probably give me more distant stations.

The active antenna is currently in a pill bottle on the 5 meter test mast (60 degree tilt) leaning on my carport roof. This is not the final packaging, permanent location nor the final height.

I’ll be reporting on how this affects my NDB station count in the coming weeks even though the darkness is waning now. The active antenna will be my main LF/MF receive antenna until the new station numbers start to fall off again. By then I may be ready for a vertical loop … null out the loud ones … who knows?