No noise on HF, what a difference

[zl2taw]

With the storm that rolled through Queensland in the last few days, I was unlucky to lose power here for a couple days and managed to get myself some storm damage along the way. I fired up the R-5000 on battery and spun the dial, and what a difference HF was, without any QRM at all (my area had lost all power).
Here is a brief log of what was heard

8831khz @ 2320utc Warhorse2 working flightwatch. Warhorse is the callsign for the Blackhawks from B SQN out of Townsville. It sounded like a helicopter at the time, and the defence forces have been deployed for flood relief in that area.
8831khz @ 0100utc VH-PSY working flightwatch. VH-PSY is a Cessna c208 registered to Queensland Police service.
8942khz @1000utc HFDL Shannon Ireland heard under Manilla aero (great catch for me as Manilla is usually S9 here)
5652khz @1007utc HFDL Riverhead, New York heard at this QTH (again another very good catch here)
11384khz@1148utc San Francisco aero working Reach ??? (I missed the last bit of the call)

Then the battery went flat

 

[LtDoc]

Amazing how much noise is generated by common everyday stuff, isn't it? It's also unfortunate how inconvenient not having power can be. To some extent, it's one or the other. Now, if 'they' let me turn on/off the power when I wanted to... Think I should hold my breath waiting for that??
- 'Doc

 

[SCPD]

Yep it's amazing how well you can hear when regional power goes out. A few years ago, we had a bad snowstorm and power was out for 2-3 days. I had the ICOM 7000 at the time and it was great. Everything from 160M on up was absolutely crystal clear with ZERO noise.

I was using a big car battery so I had radio for 24 hours or so. It was great.

 

[zz0468]

There's no reason why it can't be that quiet all the time. Of course, you'll have to do the work. Loop antennas and active noise cancelling work wonders. A loop antenna as the main RX antenna into an active noise canceller is absolutely amazing.

 

[n5ims]

With the storm that rolled through Queensland in the last few days, I was unlucky to lose power here for a couple days and managed to get myself some storm damage along the way. I fired up the R-5000 on battery and spun the dial, and what a difference HF was, without any QRM at all (my area had lost all power).
Here is a brief log of what was heard

8831khz @ 2320utc Warhorse2 working flightwatch. Warhorse is the callsign for the Blackhawks from B SQN out of Townsville. It sounded like a helicopter at the time, and the defence forces have been deployed for flood relief in that area.
8831khz @ 0100utc VH-PSY working flightwatch. VH-PSY is a Cessna c208 registered to Queensland Police service.
8942khz @1000utc HFDL Shannon Ireland heard under Manilla aero (great catch for me as Manilla is usually S9 here)
5652khz @1007utc HFDL Riverhead, New York heard at this QTH (again another very good catch here)
11384khz@1148utc San Francisco aero working Reach ??? (I missed the last bit of the call)

Then the battery went flat

Sorry for your damage, but glad you had at least a small silver lining in it. One minor comment though. QRM is interference from other stations. QRN is noise due to signals other than stations like static, electrical noise, or other stray non-station signals.

 

[zl2taw]

Sorry for your damage, but glad you had at least a small silver lining in it. One minor comment though. QRM is interference from other stations. QRN is noise due to signals other than stations like static, electrical noise, or other stray non-station signals.

hmm not sure if thats right,
I have always understood it as this QRM = Man made interference & QRN = natural interference ie static

I have used those Q codes that way in my ham career for a long time, Maybe it might make a good discussion somewhere

 

[majoco]

Here's the gospel, straight from the ITU in Geneva, who put together the "Q" codes in the first place. This was so that telegraph operators, who were really just message handlers, could request, send, ask for repeats and acknowledge receipt of messages with another operator who didn't even understand or speak your language.

RECOMMENDATION* ITU-R M.1172

It's interesting to note that Merchant Marine operators used the question mark as in "QRU?" because their (my) exam included punctuation, whereas the Royal Navy used "INT QRU" meaning "interrogative" because they didn't have to learn punctuation. I got a ticking off from the Portsmouth dockyard radio station on my first trip in a RNVR Minesweeper for using "incorrect operating procedure"!

 

[zl2taw]

thanks Martin for the reply, I guess there's an interpretation to everything