Ok so you’ve put up a new antenna and wonder if its going to work out any better than the one it replaced. It produces a lot of noise on receive and the stations sound louder but does that mean its any better. Do you sit on a band tuning up and down calling stations hoping for a reply or wait for the next contest where all the reports will be 59.
What you really need is a way of sending out a low power automated transmission and (hopefully) receiving a virtually instant reply from a distant station giving your received signal strength, both station locators and distance, and recording it for later analysis on an online database - well, now you can using a piece of software from K1JT called WSPR (short for whisper).
There is no point in me going over much that has already been said about WSPR so the best thing to do is visit http://www.g4ilo.com/wspr.html which has an excellent introduction to the system and follow that up with a visit to http://wsprnet.org/drupal/
Have a look at the map and database and especially the database column showing the output power being used – its amazing how far qrp will reach.
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