DXpedition to Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) Article on DXing.info
Guy,
Thank you very much.
73 John KC0G
On Nov 6, 10:33?am, "Guy Atkins" wrote:
Hi John,
Among the five DXers, we had the following:
1 - SDR-1000 w/HPSDR
2 - Winradio g313e
3 - SDR-IQ
1 - NRD-535D Kiwa modded
1 - Drake R8A
1 - Drake R8B
2 - Eton E1
1 - AR7030+
We were all using laptop computers as usual on our DXpeditions, and of
course the computers are needed to run the SDR radios. I suppose the other
main peripherals were the various splitters and impedance matchers always
necessary for a group DXing event like this. Most of us use hard drive
recording software such as RecAll Pro or Total Recorder Pro to capture
audio. Most of the SDR gear in use has the ability to record swaths of RF
spectrum to a wav (IQ) file for later analysis, so most of us had external
hard drives (320-500 gb) with us.
We've used the prototype Wellbrook arrays on DXpeditions beginning in June,
as well as during this QCI DXpedition. In a nutshell, it is probably the
antenna that's come the closest to Beverage antenna performance as I've ever
encountered. The F/B ratio is excellent on most signals, particularly if the
unwanted signal is on-axis with the array's orientation. We noted as much as
45 dB attenuation in these cases (using the forward/reverse switch on the
array's control box, and measured with the highly accurate signal meters on
the SDR radios). There were instances where either the Beverages or the
Wellbrook arrays (we had two arrays in use) were notably better than the
other, but most of the time they were comparable. During the summer
DXpeditions at the WA coast, more often than not we found the Wellbrook
performance exceeding our "rather short" 800 ft. Beverage antennas.
Sometimes the longer Beverage aimed northwest (1200 ft.) was better.
However, the Wellbrook does its job with just 40 meters (approx. 131 ft.) of
element spacing!
73,
Guy
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