Disappointment

Mystery solved, an earlier post about my interesting night on the ham radio. When a VHF contact seems to good to be true, it probably is. No QSL for the 370 mile QSO from Frederick Maryland to Cincinnati Ohio. That’s not the whole story. I actually was talking to a station in Cincinnati, but through an Echolink (a way to link ham radio operators over the internet) node in Hanover PA, a whopping 35 miles northeast. The signal was weak, because the Echolink node was running one watt on a rubber duck antenna behind a bookshelf.

It’s a little disappointing, but this won’t stop me from running up on the mountain when I suspect a band opening. I think echolink is neat, but there should be someway to identify an echolink station. In fact, Saturday’s tropospheric ducting forecast indicates the conditions for long distance contacts on VHF, I’ll probably be up on the mountain again.