Nags Head report #1

[Andre' Kesteloot]

Hello Assembled LFers,

This is just a short message to summarize what happened.
Other messages will follow  describing various aspects of
what was definitely a major experience. (These messages will
cover: antennas, radios, lessons learned, future plans,
etc.)

1) most of the Amrad gang left the Washington area for Nags
Head on Friday during a serious ice storm, and returned to
Washington on Monday during a severe thunderstorm!  Joe
K4OVK flew in (commercial airline) from Florida (it took him
9 hours because of the disruptions due to the ice-storm)
while Glenn KA0ESA flew in his own experimental airplane to
join us.

2) we had only  _one_  "good"  reception day (Sunday Zulu).
Several European, and one Algerian broadcasting stations,
several Lowfers from Pennsylvania, aero-beacons from Texas
and Canada, etc.

3) we did record two carriers between 137,500 and 137,900.
These recordings, made on the hard disk of one of our
laptops, and on DAT tape, need further processing and
analysis before we can say for sure whether we heard a
European amateur or not.

4) The good results obtained in hearing European LF
broadcasters are encouraging. We may decide that hearing
them is a necessary  --but not sufficient-- condition to
perform further transatlantic tests. (For instance, if/when
we hear Europe#1 we may telephone some of the British
amateurs and ask them to transmit in slow morse).

5) we lost our Internet connectivity on Sunday, and thus
could not receive many of your messages, updates etc.

6) On behalf of the AMRAD group, I would like to thank all
the European amateurs who have devoted their time and
efforts to tweak their antennas (G3LDO), replace their
output MosFets (IKODO), adjust their transmitters, send us
reports on the Internet, etc.   This is quite heart-warming
and definitely in the true spirit of Amateur-Radio.

More detailed messages to follow,

Again thanks and 73,

Andre'  N4ICK