[600MRG] WG2XXM - QRP on 630 meters

Roger Graves ve7vv at shaw.ca
Tue Oct 10 16:17:30 CDT 2017


Dick/W7WKR-WD2XSH/26 asked
> How extensive was/is your ground system when running your QRP WSPR
> station.
Not too extensive. There are three 8 ft ground rods at the old tower base (not sure if they have any effect on the antenna performance, they were installed for lightning protection), half a dozen 50-80 ft buried radials, one of which is attached to a neighbor’s 50 ft chain link fence, and a 130 ft one that runs under the 130 ft top hat. That was what was used when I was running 1W output. Since then I converted my 300 ft Beverage on Ground receiving antenna to a radial. That made a difference - the 630m antenna resistance (which is mostly ground loss) dropped from 36 to 17 Ohm and the signal reports went up about 3 dB, so at least one longer radial seems to help. (At least it was 300 ft long when I ran a wire along the fence line behind the next 3 neighbors’ houses 15 years ago. IDK how much of it is still there.)


> On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Roger Graves <ve7vv at shaw.ca> wrote:
> When I ran 1W output from my modified Softrock RXTX on 630m the WSPR signal was decoded by many stations with the best DX being 1210 km, this with a 40 ft vertical (plus top loading wire) in the summer. That was a lot of fun to do. JT9 should be able to make contacts over that distance with that power level.
> 73, Roger




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