A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a lack of marketing in amateur radio. I recounted my experience at Northern Telecom with a product called the DV-1. Well, as it turns out, one of my readers is also a former Northern Telecom employee. He wrote:
Small world! I joined BNR Atlanta in 1985 as a market research manager in data communications. Later that year, I ran a customer study to identify why DV-1 didn’t sell and whether anything could be salvaged. The results of that study started a helluva controversy at NTI in Nashville. As you probably know, there were several attempts to repurpose the DV-1 platform but nothing ever worked out.
For years there was a DV-1 at the Nashville building. It’s the only place I ever saw one in use.
I really wanted to see that study, so I emailed the fellow. Unfortunately, he no longer had a copy, but I really wanted to hear more. I suggested a telephone call, but he suggested we get on 40 meter phone, which we did. We had a great chat about our experiences with the DV-1 and with Northern Telecom in general.
Is this ground wave?
In the past week, I’ve had a couple of contacts whose propagation mode I can’t quite figure out. The first was with W8KIX on 30 meters. According to QRZ.Com, he is 48.3 miles away from me as the crow flies. He was really strong—S9+.
It’s hard to believe that we were working ground wave, but he suggested that we try 40 meter and then 80 meters to see if we could copy one another. On both 40 meters and 80 meters, we were both S9. So, does that mean we were really working ground wave? I would have thought there’d be some difference in signal strength had we been working sky wave.
Just last night, I worked VE3CWP on 40 meters. According to QRZ.Com, he’s only 35.4 miles away from me. He was actually S9 + 20 dB here. He gave me a similar report. As a result of this contact, I’m thinking that we really are working ground wave somehow.
As an aside, I was amused to read his QRZ.Com page. He writes, “Licensed since May 29, 1958, my 16th birthday.” My first ticket was dated July 16, 1971, my 16th birthday.
Rob W4ZNG says
re ground wave, are your antennas both verticals? If so, gw seems like a good possibility on all of these bands. If both antennas are low horizontals, I’d say NVIS… except that I wouldn’t expect that to work on 80m in the daytime.
QST had a good article on prop modes (link below) that includes a plot of HF gw ranges. http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/8501031.pdf From Fig. 1 in that article, it is entirely plausible that you were seeing gw propagation.
The weirdest gw propagation I’ve (inadvertently) done was on 10m. I was talking with a friend about 10 miles away, expecting line-of-sight prop between our two high antennas, much as one might do on 11m in ordinary CB use. It was working, but the signals were much lower than usual. Then I discovered that my feed line was switched, not to the high antenna, but to the ground-mounted 6BTV vertical. What was above-the-horizon on the high antenna was over-the-horizon for the 6BTV, so the prop mode could only have been ground wave. And yeah, according to Fig. 1, it would just be possible.