In the northeast US, nearly every morning after 8am, a group gets on 144.205
SSB.
The better stations are working well over 300 miles over mountain terains.
My station is not of that calibere but still routinly work out to 300 miles off a single 12 element M2, 100 watts with a KW480 driving a Transverter.
My location on the eastern border of Pa. allows me to get as far as Toronto, Canada to the north, Columbus ,OH area to the west and N.C. to the south.
The need for high gain antennas, height, good receiver sensitivity and low loss coax is the way to go.
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A hint here it to say that a low end station needs a lot of antenna gain and a good rotor and pay attention to zeroing in on direction.
The better contest grade stations with a lot of height have a of of power but use stacked lower gain antennas to get wider beam width and still have the gain of larger antennas, so rotor movement is not so critical.
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I have chosen to go with N type connectors for the best overall performance.
Here in PA we seldom get any good enhancement in tropo conditions.
A check of the HEPBURN website can often show an enhancement prediction coming that could provide possible conditons to work more areas or longer distances.
The FLA area is often very hot for good tropo action.
This is just part of Ham radio just to see what can be done dispite the special equipment that is needed to make it happen.
I
am beginning a new band for the same challange. 432
SSB with the same type setup and power to see what happens over time.
The equipment is in place and working. Now to get the tower back up with it's 6m, 2m, and 432 beams remotely switched to the same 1" Heliax very low loss transmission line.
The best conditions are coming in May through AUG with the VHF contest in June. Then the bands come alive for a good time from 6m all the way to 10 gigs..
This should give you some idea what might happen and you would be a Trophy contact on any of these bands, once they know your there.
Use E-mail to tell some when your trying and soon many will be looking for you everyday.
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I forgot to mention that on 2m and up there are seldom ever any DX conditons as you might know it from 6m down.
Most often the conditions for longer distances involve weather patterns of Hot and cold boundry layers between fronts, and another thing called Ducting on 2m up.
The Ducting occurance can carry a signal beyond the normal tropo distances with very little ERP in use. You just have to be there at the right time.
Beacons are usefull at all times to tell what may be happening on any given band..
Good luck.
Linear Mode
