Garth has a 2ft. dish in 1017ft. a.s.l. and 8W into long waveguide, he thinks that only 4W make it to the antenna.
Jim has approx. 2ft. offset dish with DEMI transverter, 2W at the feed:
Herbert has the same 2ft. offset dish with 10mW DEMI transverter and external PA, only approx. 1.4W at the feed:
We have operated from EM48rq, using a parking lot of St. Luke's Rehabilitation Medical Facility just above the "Butterfly House" near Chesterfield. This place is in 700ft. a.s.l. and has nice open view towards West:
I believe that these QSOs were made through "wapor duct" that gets created by evaporation around sunrise. First, we didn't copy Garth until sunrise and second, we were aiming our dishes 5.5 deg. up (I have a digital gauge for that). There were no signals audible when aiming at the horizon, but I have copied Garth S8 after raising the antenna!
Tropo conditions were promising today, so it might also have been tropospheric propagation:
Garth did NOT copy the WB9PNU/B beacon today.
73 Herbert
AF4JF
