Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio Last week I spent a little time talking about the Weak Signal Propagation Reporters network, or WSPR, pronounced Whisper. You might remember that I set up my radio to receive these signals to see what I could learn. Turns out, I learnt quite a bit. I left the software running for a week. During that time my station reported 456 signals received with a total of 54 stations in 27 call areas. The longest distance 14,000 km, PC1JB in Veenendaal in the Netherlands who was using 1 watt. The best performance based on km per watt is R0AGL in Siberia, 10,000 km, with 2 milliwatt. Highest power heard, one station with 100 watts, but from a performance perspective, only just squeaks into the top 10 contacts. Typically stations used 5 watt or less. My 10m quarter-wave vertical antenna was pretty good in hearing things across all bands. I heard stations across the frequency range, from 160m through to 10m. It heard 1 station on 160m, VK7MF, using 5 watts, 3,000km away. The most prolifi