Tuesday, March 19, 2019

WSPR - 40m, 1 Watt, 16441 km

Distance wise, this is the 2nd best spot I've reported yet at 16441 km / 10216 mi, from ZS1LCD in Cape Town South Africa who was running 1 watt on 40m [7MHz]. ZS1OA remains king at 16511 km / 10259 mi on 30m [10MHz], and ZS3D is a regular in 3rd place at 16233 km / 10087 mi on 40m.


After running WSPR for about three months, I took a break from it about a week ago having built up a good feel for what I can expect with the current antenna configuration. Last night I had it running again after adding a 20 ft horizontal wire to the top of the 43 ft vertical turning it into a 1/4 wave inverted L on 80m.

With the exception of 60m, Remote ATU has no problem finding 1:1 match 80 thru 10m, 40m was the surprise since the antenna is close to a 1/2 wave. Hard to know with out an antenna analyzer to see what is really going on. I'll soon have a better idea, ordered a RigExpert AA-55 analyzer, and another 40 x 32 ft radials for the vertical / inverted L to bring the total to 60.