30m WSPR

Rather than try and see JT65, I’m now having a play with WSPR on 30m, the centre crystal frequency is below the dial frequency, and I can narrow the passband without adverse effects on the WSPR-X software sensitivity. Testing with the FT817 at 0.5W into a dummy load a few metres away comes up strong on the WSPR waterfall, now all I have to do is wait for the WSPR spots to come in.

I forgot to mention, my local noise floor on 10MHz is about S8, so anything will struggle to get through, but something should come through…

80m WSPR

Simple change over to a 3.579MHz XTAL, this one pretty close to the right frequency, 3.57883MHz (according to my FT-817). I can hear a station on 3584, VK2FAD, who was on 7163 40m, D’oh!, that’s not what I wanted! But as I have no filtering and the antenna is made for 40m, it’s not extremely surprising. OK, lets switch to WSPR.

Losses in my filter design are going to hurt me here, we are looking at 2-3dB. Also keep in mind that my noise floor at 40m is about S9+, on 80 it’s closer to S9+20. something worth noting is the noise level, on 30m SDRadio said about -95dB, on 80m it’s about -103dB, that’s a lot lost because the antenna is not resonant.

Day 2 (80m)

Added bandpass filter as, series 56pF + 33uH, a nice sharp filter.

Spots received:

(repeats within a few hours for same station deleted)

Callsign	Band	Date	UT	dB	dBm	km
VK3FFB	30m	15/03/16	0622	-27	37	650
VK1UN	30m	15/03/16	0854	-25	33	650
ZL2ABN	30m	15/03/16	0942	-27	27	3240
VK1KF	30m	16/03/16	0648	-7	37	940
VK1TKA	30m	16/03/16	0648	-22	23	940
VK6XT	30m	16/03/16	1008	-20	37	2000
VK2RG	30m	16/03/16	1010	-24	27	1130
VK7DIK	80m	16/03/16	1148	-22	33	1050
VK6XT	80m	16/03/16	1322	-22	33	1050