banjoplayinnerd

There's this guy in New Zealand named Geoff. He's a radio ham, and his callsign is ZL3GA. I've never met him, don't know anything about him other than his callsign and what's on his website . . . and that this afternoon he was able to hear my signal at a low average quality, 7400 miles away.

The intersection of computers and ham radio has provided us with the ability to do some very interesting things. One of those is automated signal reporting, sometimes called "reverse beacon." When a ham is off the air (yeah, it happens once in a while) they can leave their equipment on with the software running and it will report any signals they hear back to a central server. You can then query that server to see if anyone has heard you, and how well.

It looks sort of like this:

UTC 	RX	TX	Signal	Dial	Offset	DX	Bearing
20:16	WB0LCW	WA7KPK	-15	21076	  8	1535	102°
20:16	KC9RNK	WA7KPK	-20	21076	 11	1759	 90°
20:16	K6JEB	WA7KPK	-13	21076	-27	 660	177°
20:16	W5JZ	WA7KPK	 -6	21076	 70	1694	117°
20:16	AK1P	WA7KPK	-19	21076	  5	 710	175°
20:16	KB3X	WA7KPK	-11	21076	 16	2315	 95°
20:16	KB9AMG	WA7KPK	-12	21076	 16	1696	 88°
20:16	ZL3GA	WA7KPK	-17	21076	-48	7402	223°
20:16	K0ASK	WA7KPK	-13	21076	-11	1517	104°

The column headings are a bit cryptic (and shortened from the original), but the relevant columns are "signal", "DX" (short for "distance") and "Bearing." "DX" and "Bearing" are the approximate distance in miles and azimuth, or great circle bearing, from my location in Shoreline. "Signal" is how well the other station is receiving me. Higher is better, with 0 being the best. My -6 to W5JC in Texas is pretty decent. Most of the other stateside signals are average to verging on poor. (-24 is generally considered about the lowest signal that the software can decode.) The big surprise was my signal into New Zealand, which at -17 is below average but still very readable.

This is a great tool for finding out whether my signal is getting out and how well. The fact that I sometimes have Japanese, Australian, New Zealand and Asiatic Russian stations reporting that they can hear me is a Good Thing. I wish I was being heard by more European stations, but right now I'll take what I can get.

Unfortunately sometimes I feel like I have a "politician" station in that my message gets out just fine but I don't hear them very well, or sometimes at all. I have plans to improve on my antenna over the next month or so and it will be interesting to do before-and-after comparisons to see whether the improvements actually improved anything.