[pskmail] A few reflections after GlobalSET
- From: Per Crusefalk <per@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pskmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:27:01 +0100
I was up early this morning, 0300 UTC, as I intended to go north to the
voluntary radio organisations office in town for this exercise. As I was
aware that condx on 30 meters is not supposed to be very good at that
time I went to my shack to ping around and get a feel for what would
work. The only server that I could work, apart from my own server but
that would be cheating, was DK4XI on 3588 kHz. But, there was quite a
lot of QRM from strong RTTY-stations so I could do aprs but a connected
session would have been a challenge. So I decided I would use the
antenna at home for the first three messages and go to town and handle
the rest from there (no rule restriction on that). So, I sent the first
three messages via DK4XI using pskaprs and got nice acks every time.
DK4XI was quite strong then, abt S6-7. Sending these messages took abt
20 minutes in all including preparing them.
I then packed the mobile station in bags and travelled by car to the
offices in town. When there I had the earth anchor in the ground,
erected the 6m fish pole antenna and connected the coax to the tuner in
abt 5-10 minutes. I then set up the station inside and hooked it up to
their battery and was ready to rock after abt 20 minutes or so. Then, as
something just have to go wrong each and every time, I noticed high swr
and realized that I had a bad coax... I was lucky in that they had extra
coax and I could borrow, thanks.
The hf environment in town wasn't so very nice, I realize that I am
lucky living where I do. Its normally very quiet at home but in town I
had the S-meter constantly at S7-8. Anyway, I started pinging on 30
meters and got response from IS0GRB. I could hear the responses but
fldigi didn't detect so very much. The signal from IS0GRB got better and
better all the time and at abt 0630 UTC I could try a connected session
(which worked but not very good). Regarding the messages I demonstrated
sending the three messages using pskaprs and it worked so well, and so
fast, that I had to try to prolong it by bouncing messages back and
forth between me and IS0GRB a few times.
There was also other activities there with both voice and pactor /
winlink being tested. When I left they had not been able to send any
messages over pactor / winlink at all, the SCS modem didn't manage to
connect and that was probably due to the QRM level and the bandwidth
required with that mode. So, the game pskmail vs pactor/winlink ended
like a walkover set in tennis: 6-0. I could have sent many more messages
to increase that score but the exercise had a set limit of only six
messages.
73 de Per, sm0rwo
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