messin with LW again

[mmckenna]

Yeah, I'm up at UC Santa Cruz. The receiver and antennas are up on one of the taller buildings, about 1000 feet above sea level. Ethernet connection and I can sit in my office or at home in Watsonville and run the radio. We use it primarily for monitoring our VHF, UHF and 800MHz system, but it runs from 40KHz up to 3.5GHz, so it gets used for "other" things too.

The end fed antenna is up the side of a tower about 15 feet and is fairly horizontal, trouble is there are a bunch of air handlers on the roof and a couple of VHF and 800MHz repeaters as well as cellular carriers. When the repeaters TX it tends to wipe out the front end of the radio. I seem to also have some pretty bad wideband noise from about 200KHz to 300KHz, at least I did last night.

Wish I had more time to play with it, I find the LW spectrum pretty interesting.

[ridgescan]

Do you have the far end of the wire pointing towards the tower, or is the feed end at the tower? If so, I wonder if its loading your antenna at that far end especially when the repeaters fire up?

[mmckenna]

The feed end is at the tower, but out about 3 feet from the leg. Feed line is LMR600. Coax shield is grounded at the tower base and a polyphaser is at the ground panel near the entrance inside. Far end attaches to another tower, but has about 15 feet of non conductive line and an egg insulator.

I'd like to try moving the feed point up the tower, but too much stuff is in the way. I might try swinging the far end of it around away from the air handlers. When I put it up I was in a rush and haven't had time to play with it. Right now it's running roughly NE to SW with the feed point on the NE end and slopes down at about a 10 degree angle.
Curious to play with it in a more vertical angle, or facing different angles. Good part of it is I've got lots of room to play around.

[k9rzz]

Here's a tip that's worked for me.

Since the fading rates on longwave are r e a l s l o w, I've had good sucess by recording audio on any given frequencies for say 3 or 4 hours, then going over the recording later to see who faded in. I got some good long haul stuff that way.

Also, monitor DX BEACON LOGGER!, these guys are serious about chasing NDBs.

[mmckenna]

353KHz, LLD out of Lanai Hawaii! 2371 miles.
350KHz, NY from Enderby BC. (NY with long dead key) 955 miles.

I was thinking the terrain might be making the antenna pattern a little directional, but those two are about 120 degrees from each other.

[ridgescan]

That's a great DX! You sure can't say that your system is "deaf" I'd say it's receiving pretty darn well