I totally forgot on Friday night to switch the QRSS transmitter on but remembered just before I went to bed last night to tune the aerial for 40m and connect up the kit.
This morning I had a hunt through the archives at W4HBK’s Pensacola Snapper and was very pleased to see that my 150mW had crossed the pond for a few hours overnight. This is one of the best traces I saw, captured at 04:10z
Bill is located in EM60kj, a distance of 4,528 miles (7,288 kilometres) from me.
I’m always amazed at what QRSS can do. The transmitter is a simple kit which cost me a tenner and the aerial is just a random length of wire in the garden. The QRSS beacon we run at the Martello Tower Group runs on 10MHz with a simple home made dipole aerial and is regularly spotted in Australia. The total cost of parts for that beacon including the aerial was less than twenty quid and it’s been described to me as “one of the most important beacons on 30m” due to the fact that it’s always there and is a “good reliable indication of propagation from Northern Europe”.