On Easter Sunday March 31st at 12 noon I had half an hour to spare so gathered my gear and walked up to the park bench in the upper east corner of the Cedar Lakes property and right under the electric fence. I was QRV by 12:10 pm with no problems. The end of the efhw was up 25 feet with the mid point being about 10feet up.. This is a good location since it is quite high up the slope behind cedar lakes. I could hear at leas two electric fences. My noise blanker on setting 2 was able to eliminate some of the fence noise spikes but not totally. It is better at eliminating a single fence since I imagine that it settles on a specific cadence. When there is more than one fence it is unable to resolve fully.
I called for about 10 minutes and was answered by om Derek ZS5DM in Kloof near Durban. He reported a perfect day weather wise and gave me a 599 signal report. He was unable to QSO for long. By 12:30 I was back at the house and ready to head to a braai at my sister's place. I was again truly amazed at the ability to effectively communicate over a long distance with such a simple and fast deployment. This time of day seems to be optimum for SA wide operations on 7020Khz at this time of year. It will be interesting to see how propagation changes as the season progresses.
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| Bird crap is an occupational hazard :) |
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