Odd Experiment In UHF/VHF Weak-signal Modes

  Back in January 2014, a few of us local hams tried an experiment. The idea was to try VHF/UHF SSB on a local level with vertical antennae, rather than horizontal. Everybody has a vertical antenna for FM, but not very many have a horizontal antenna. So N0YNT (Matt), KD0UIH (Chuck), KD0WZW (Pete), and I tried it out. UHF SSB didn't really work very well, but we got two-metre SSB to work nicely with a vertical antenna. 

  With the recent tropo ducting affecting even UHF propagation, I began to think about UHF SSB again. Maybe UHF SSB was viable locally at night. After all, people work UHF SSB with 5W and a three-element beam and make it 50 miles. I also wondered if tropo ducting affected polarisation like ionospheric bounces do. Maybe UHF weak-signal modes could work with vertical polarisation if tropo ducting gave it a boost. 

  I really wanted to get some answers, and that would require other people to help out. So I contrived an experiment. It would have to be something that people could do at their leisure, and something that wouldn't require a lot of time or co-ordination. What I did was set up a propagation beacon and emailed several hams to ask for their participation. A few were willing to give it a try. 

  A CW beacon was set up on 432.325 from 6:30 PM to about 9 PM, and it fired every three minutes. The Yaesu FT-897D has a built-in CW beacon function, though it only runs 20W on UHF. At 13 wpm, there was more than enough time to hear the beacon signal. I used the same vertical antenna that had worked so well for our 2014 VHF SSB experiment. The beacon would run for three nights, so there would be enough time for everyone to listen for it.

  The operators that participated were N0AGI (Nagi), AE0CX (Chuck), and KE0NA (Dave). At various points, Dave also set up his own beacon using a beam to get better results. 

  The results were disappointing, but that's why you do an experiment. Dave was able to hear the beacon at about nine miles distance, but it was weak. Chuck, in St. Paul, couldn't hear it all. Nagi, in Prior Lake, also couldn't hear it. The others were intrigued enough by this effort to try again on two metres. 

  A beacon was set up on 144.285 with 20W. Dave heard it at 569, compared to 549 on UHF. This morning, I set up the Yagi to point south and ran 50W in hopes that Nagi would be able to hear it. He did. Here's the video. It's a strong signal and completely readable. 

  The interesting thing is that Nagi and I can't reach each other with UHF. He runs a repeater on 442.075+ from a tower at his home. I can't even hear it ID with a six-element Yagi pointed straight at it. He can't hear the UHF CW beacon when it's beamed at him, so weak-signal modes don't help. But he can clearly hear a two-metre beacon. 

  Dave's case is also interesting when comparing the two bands. Here's a video of his reception of the UHF beacon. There's nothing on the S-meter, yet the signal is completely clear. This is what Dave and I also found when experimenting with UHF FM simplex before. The signal itself hardly breaks S1, but it's completely readable. Now look at the video of Dave receiving the VHF beacon. It's S7, but about as clear as the UHF signal was. 

  I really did expect better results on UHF. I had even thought that there might be a use for a UHF propagation beacon locally. We didn't try horizontal polarisation on either band. I'll leave that for someone else to experiment with. Frankly, I'm bewildered by the poor UHF results. A few FM repeaters in town run with not much more than 20W on FM, and they don't use beams. They reach further than nine miles. Shouldn't weak-signal modes perform better than FM? Is there something about UHF weak-signal modes that requires horizontal polarisation? Remember, we were working vertical-to vertical, so there weren't any cross-polarisation losses. 

  On the other hand, VHF worked quite well. We used vertical antennae in that case, and that didn't seem to impede propagation. Two-metre weak-signal modes worked in a case where UHF failed in both FM and CW. I can even see a case being made for a two-metre propagation beacon in town, such as exist on HF. 

  I didn't see any evidence that tropo ducting had any effect on our efforts on either band. During the period that the beacon was operating, I was able to reach several FM repeaters that are unavailable otherwise. For example, the UHF Hugo 444.050 machine opened up at night at S8 levels. None of this translated to greater coverage for the UHF beacon. How is it that I can clearly work an FM repeater 22 miles away with the same rig that fails to reach a station 14 miles away (AE0CX) using CW on the same band? I'm completely baffled. Does tropo work differently for weak-signal modes? Vertical polarisation was used in both cases, FM and CW. It makes no sense, but there it is. 

  Even stranger was that AE0CX (Chuck) couldn't hear KE0NA's (Dave) UHF beacon at a distance of about six miles. That's almost HT distance for FM. Both were using roof-mounted antennae, and Dave was running 20W. Maybe there's something about UHF weak-signal modes that makes vertical polarisation untenable, but doesn't affect FM. Again, I'm baffled.

  Out of the four operators that participated in this effort, we have two Extras and one General; I'm the "dummy". Maybe someone else can make sense of these results. 

  We proved before that 2M SSB voice is viable with a vertical antenna, provided you are communicating with other vertically-polarised stations. This experiment really drove that point home. CW was used because it eliminated the need for someone to actually talk for hours on end. The point was not to prove that CW was an effective mode for local two-metre communication. Having said that, I could see 2M CW being a viable means for local operators to learn the code in a "hands-on" manner, without requiring anything more than their current VHF vertical antenna. 

  Somewhere down the line, I'd like to see if QRP power levels (such as the FT-817ND offers) are effective for local two-metre weak-signal work. It might also be interesting to compare horizontal and vertical polarisation, and find out if it makes a dramatic difference for UHF. I'm also intrigued now at the possibility of horizontally-polarised FM, especially on UHF.

  Even though this experiment was perplexing and challenged my pre-conceived notions, it was gratifying to find local operators are still willing to experiment and try different things. If someone else wants to try beaconing with different antennae arrangements from different distances or at different power levels, I'm always open to that. Too often, I run into "know-it-all" people that never try different things because they already 'know' what the results will be. That seems counter to the spirit of amateur radio. In this case, though, a few people stepped up and tried something that they hadn't done before -- without 'knowing' what the results would be in advance. 

 Weak-signal modes aren't for everyone, and there isn't a lot of activity to justify the expense of the equipment needed for VHF/UHF work. I'm not trying evangelise anything, however. It's all about figuring things out and thinking "outside the box".

Loose Notes 8/16/15

  I had a great day on the air yesterday (8/15). Getting up early to take advantage of the tropo ducting, I spent an hour on two-metre SSB and CW with my tape-measure Yagi set up horizontally. Then I switched over to a vertical whip and tried the same thing, with the idea that I might not have been pointed in the best direction. Topping it off with some UHF SSB and CW, I called it quits after two hours as the propagation began to fade. No contacts were made, but I had a few near-misses. 

  Putting the Yagi in the vertical position, I moved over to FM. Even though the peak ducting was past, I reached a VHF repeater in Owatonna for a short contact with K0AJB (Kevin). Then I took advantage of the beam to work some local repeaters that are harder to reach from Plymouth -- such as the St. Paul VHF .120 -- where I ran into KC0FMI (Bob) and WW8A (Wayne). FM simplex was apparently dead at that point, but I did run into WE0K (Phil) in Columbia Heights later on the 146.52 calling frequency. I even put my six-element UHF Yagi up and managed to reach the Hugo .050 repeater and chat with N0SBU (George) himself. 

  Later in the evening, I ran into K0LAV (Paul) on the UHF .800 repeater. During the course of our conversation, the repeater just plain quit for several minutes. And, in another conversation with N0BID, it did the same thing. The 444.800+ hasn't been its old reliable self over the past year. 

  With all of that out of the way, let's look at some of the recent developments: 

• The Richfield 444.475+ (118.8 PL) repeater is back on the air, incarnated as a System Fusion machine. Though it putatively is linked full-time cross-band with the Richfield 145.390- repeater, I was only able to get traffic from the UHF side to repeat on the VHF side. As far as I could tell, nothing on the VHF machine gets re-transmitted to the UHF side.  

• N0BVE (Don) has resurrected a previously-mentioned project on his SNP 145.230- (114.8 PL) machine in Chaska. Formerly on 442.925+, the VHF .230 now hosts a WIRES-X link to a hub in Beaumont, TX. This hub, in turn, connects with dozens of other repeaters in the U.S. and even England. To me, it seems like the closest analogue equivalent to DMR. The Chaska repeater can be hard to reach -- it's only S7 here in Plymouth -- but it's an interesting experiment that I hope will stick around.  

• The latest rumours are that N0AGI (Nagi) is exploring the possibility of linking his 442.175+ (100.0 PL) System Fusion repeater in Prior Lake with the Minneapolis 444.425+ (114.8 PL) power-house machine.  While Nagi's UHF repeater has excellent coverage to the south and south-west (nearly to Mankato), topography has conspired against him to prevent any significant coverage to the north. If this works out, the coverage of both repeaters will greatly expand and the metro will see more continuous UHF coverage. 

• The 442.600+ repeater in Maplewood has been down for several weeks now, and the Dayton 444.450+ (114.8 PL) has, at least temporarily, joined the list of absent UHF machines in the metro. The UHF .450 is the only System Fusion repeater in the north-west metro.  EDIT: I've confirmed that the 444.450 is back on the air now.

• Looking at APRS, it seems as if KC0LDH has pulled the plug on his Becker I-Gate. Meanwhile, AE0EE-5 has appeared on a part-time basis in the Uptown area as an RPi gateway. N0HOY-10 has the icon for the digipeater in the proper place (rather than in Wisconsin) now. KD0RVY-1 is (hopefully) sticking around now as a much-needed I-Gate in the northern exurbs. Also, W0AZR-1 has recently popped up as a digipeater near Austin, MN. It's doing a great job covering I-90, working as a team with the gateway in Glenville. And K8IRC also just appeared as a gateway in northern MN between Coleraine and Hibbing. There are a lot of digipeaters up that way, but gateways are scarce, so it's always nice to see hams stepping up to the plate and filling the gap. 

• What else? The power-house 147.225+ (no PL) repeater near Brainerd has switched over to System Fusion. It's now the most northerly SF repeater in MN, and boasts a 50+ mile coverage radius. The 145.130- (no PL) is another SF machine just slightly further south, but is no slouch in coverage, either -- and it has an EchoLink node (233515). 

• We're less than two weeks away from the launch of the Fox-1A FM satellite (435.180 up, 145.980 down). Next year should see four more FM satellites launched, including three Chinese "birds". The number and quality of satellite passes should be amazing this time next year. As always, the time of local passes can be found here, so practice up on the SO-50 and be ready for the new opportunities.

VHF tropo propagation gets crazy

  I had Friday off of work, so I got up early to take advantage of the tropospheric ducting that affects VHF and UHF frequencies. Over the past few weeks, I've been watching the real-time propagation maps that use APRS stations and gateways as beacons to gather data on how far signals are reaching in a particular area. I noticed a clear pattern: propagation was best in the morning, and it deteriorated as the day went on. 

An example of a great propagation map

   VHF / UHF aren't tied to solar activity like HF is. Instead of space weather, terrestrial weather creates favourable tropospheric propagation. And when conditions are good, even stations such as mine can reach much further than they can normally. 

  The first thing that I did was set my three-element tape measure Yagi to horizontal for a shot at two-metre SSB. Mostly, I was working with CW to make the best of the 50W power limitation on my FT-897D. While I actually heard three CW stations, they didn't respond to me. I heard local K0AD (Alan) on SSB, but he didn't come back, either. Next, I tried some UHF CW without luck. After a couple of hours, I switched the Yagi to vertical and began to try out some fairly distant FM repeaters. 

  With the beam (and the improved conditions), I reached the Baldwin repeater in Wisconsin easily. Good so far. Then I moved over to the Balsam Lake 147.195+ repeater, where I found K0JCR (Joe). It's about 60 miles to the Balsam Lake machine from my place in Plymouth, but I was quite surprised to learn that Joe was coming in from St. Peter! That's over 100 miles from Balsam Lake. We tried to QSY to 146.520 for FM simplex, but that didn't work out. There were several other operators on that frequency, though, unlike what you usually find. We met up again back on the Wisconsin .195 for a bit, but I was eager to explore the airwaves and find what else I could reach.  

  I thought that I hit the 145.310- (110.9 PL) in Duluth, but it was just the St. Paul repeater on that same frequency that uses no PL tone. North wasn't very good to me, and I couldn't even reach the LSAC Giese 146.865- repeater. Maybe it's off-air, anyway. So I turned the beam to the south and quickly picked up several distant machines: 147.105- (Owatonna), 147.240+ (Mankato), 146.910- (Willmar), and the 146.940- in Waseca. 

  I was feeling pretty cocky at this point -- or pretty cocky for a guy with 50W and a cheap Yagi, that is -- and I decided to try for the repeater in Fairmont. Alas, it was not to be. Right about then, I heard a crash and saw that the tripod on my balcony had toppled over the edge, dropping three stories to the ground. I had failed to put the weight on the bottom cross-bars after I rotated it to the south, and the wind must have come up. 

  Obviously, I was horrified. This could very well be just the pretext the HOA would need to ban the further use of the tripod. "Someone could have been killed!", they would say. Highly doubtful, of course. Rushing outside, apparently no one had seen the potential disaster. I was amazed to find that the tripod was completely undamaged. The Yagi, however, was destroyed. The tape measure elements were permanently bent, the PVC pipe of the boom was cracked, and the crimp-on connector had been pulled off. 

  That pretty much put an end to the day's explorations, and conditions were declining already. 

  I briefly pondered getting a better beam to replace the cheap tape-measure Yagi. The problem would be storing it when it wasn't in use. The tape-measure Yagi was designed for portable use, and it broke down into sections with the elements folding in to the PVC pipe. For all of its faults, I ordered another from eBay. 

  So, it'll be a few weeks before I can get back on two-metre SSB. Even though I've had very little luck making contacts, it's an interesting change from FM and it's been a good chance to use CW outside of HF.

New 2M Yagi is exciting

   The 2M Yagi that I ordered off of EBay arrived, and it works great! Simplicity itself, it's made out of PVC pipe and tape measures. The boom is sectional, and the elements fold in for relatively compact storage and carrying. At a price of $35, the seller is definitely making a profit, but the design is a sound one. The only thing that I'd even begin to take issue with is the choice of a BNC connector on the coaxial cable pigtail. The seller should at least offer SMA or PL-259 as an option, especially since the three-foot pigtail will probably need to be extended.

  I improvised a mount on my tripod by putting a wooden dowel in the horizontal mount hole and using hose clamps to attach the "handle" of the Yagi to the dowel. I'm working on a more robust mounting scheme, as well as an adapter that would allow this antenna to be mounted on any common photographic tripod. Still, just to test it out, this hokey arrangement worked well enough. 

  Setting my FT-897D on the lowest VHF output available (5W), I adjusted the mast of the tripod to be about shoulder height. This would allow the antenna to be used on my balcony without being seen from the ground and attracting the attention of my neighbours. Pointing it roughly east, I tried a relatively easy repeater first to test the SWR -- the 145.290- in New Brighton. The SWR was virtually flat, and the repeater came back with a full-scale signal (as it usually does, even with a 1/4-wave whip). Next, I tried K0LAV's (Paul) new 147.390+ repeater with identical results. 

  Moving on to bigger challenges, I tried the St. Paul 145.310+ and 145.170- repeaters. These usually both require at least 10W to "ker-chunk", and 15W to work readably, with my whip from here on the other side of town. With the new Yagi (mounted fairly low, remember), they both opened up with only 5W and came back with full-scale (S++) signals instead of their usual S9. Likewise with the 146.985- in Inver Grove Heights. Now we were getting somewhere! 

  Pointing the beam north, while still keeping it low, the Isanti 145.210- responded with 5W and an S9 signal -- and this was with the signal going through the wall on the balcony. That was promising. Swinging the beam to the south-west brought in the Faribault 146.790- machine with an S4 signal, though I couldn't "ker-chunk" it with such low power. 

  So I raised the mast to roof-top height, as it was already getting dark anyway. Free of obstructions, 5W now opened up the Faribault repeater and gave S8 on the return. The Baldwin 145.250- also came in clearly. The Balsam Lake 147.195+ repeater took 10W to "ker-chunk" it, and only came back S4 or so, but that's a decent haul for such a compromise arrangement without superior propagation conditions. 

  I was pretty pleased with the performance and the options this new antenna would offer me, even keeping it low. Even better was that I now finally had a horizontal 2M antenna for weak-signal work. I turned it to mount horizontally and kept it a roof-top level, trying some two-metre CW. I was very surprised to find that horizontal polarisation eliminated virtually all of the interference with my TV and stereo -- and the potential for annoying my neighbours. Unsurprisingly, I found no one coming back to me on CW. Likewise with two-metre SSB on 144.200, but that mode of operation is now open to me. 

  Lowering the antenna, I was just about to call it a night when I got the crazy idea to try the new Yagi on UHF. I set the output to the lowest level (2W) to avoid damaging the radio, and uttered the words "KD0TLS test" on the MARA 444.800+ repeater. The SWR was higher, but still within acceptable range (about 1.6:1). That was pretty amazing in itself, but it was even more amazing to hear K0LAV and KE0ALI (Josh) come back to my sign with a report that I was full-quieting into the machine. With just two watts and the mast un-raised! 

  With it's light weight (virtually nothing), it's dual-band capability, and its ability to break down and fold up, this could be an inexpensive option to play with FM satellites, take camping, or take down to the park for a little portable operation on a sunny day. It also allows you to greatly improve your signal operating indoors with an HT. I was able to attach it to a floor mic stand (like musicians use to mic their amps), and get acceptable performance indoors -- though it works much better outdoors on VHF. 

  What it's not good for is mounting on your roof, since the tape measure elements aren't rigid at all. For portable use in windy conditions, you could tape thin wooden dowels to the elements, I suppose. 

  I picked up a length of PVC pipe, and I'll be working on an improved mounting solution. I expect that this new antenna will be used quite often in my rotation at my restrictive condo location.    

Aerials in the Park 5/10 pre-event thoughts

Last month was the first Aerials in the Park event this year. Though I arrived late and set up by the gate of Long Lake Regional Park, Brandon (callsign forgotten) turned up and lent a hand as I set up. Soon afterwards, N0YNT (Matt) and N0TYE (Paul) joined me. It was a bit blustery and chilly by 4 PM, so we broke it up.

I used a 13-foot tripod and attached an NMO ground-plane kit to the mast with hose clamps. Then, I could use any NMO-mount mobile antenna for FM work. My Yaesu FT-897 had the internal NiMH battery packs (FNB-78), so I was limited to 20W (10W on UHF). That pretty much left me with FM repeaters to work with, as I had no directional antenna for simplex. It interesting how many distant repeaters I could hit from that location.

For the next event (5/10), I've been contemplating using a DMount and two ten-metre ham-sticks for some SSB/CW, as there wouldn't be any concerns of interfering with neighbours' electronics at the park. 20W on CW isn't bad, although nobody will QSO with me at 6 or 7 wpm. Essentially, I'd just be doing it for "show". And, as long I'd just be screwing around, why couldn't I do two-metre CW? I could string up a 1/4-wave dipole for two metres on that tripod, and draw a big crowd of arrogant 'superiors' telling me that I'm doing it wrong.

It also occurs to me that I could take advantage of the event for a little FM experimentation. If I'm at a known location, at a known time, other hams could use their superior power or antennae to reach me on FM simplex. With my limited power and my Technician licence, there's not much that I can do there that a dozen other people will be doing a dozen times better. I have a 1.25M Yagi, but I don't have the portable power to run my TYT TH-9000. Maybe I could use my 5W HT and try some 1.25M FM simplex. There are enough people in the metro with 1.25M FM HTs or mobiles that it might be interesting for everyone involved to put those to the test in a scheduled situation.

Spring is the time for hams to repair or upgrade their antennae, so why not have some crazy dude like me out in a park giving signal reports? It beats being ignored by CW snobs on HF as I pound away on a straight key for an hour or two.

As long as CW operators ignore the letters "QRS", I will continue to ignore their dead language.

Maybe there's some kind of "joint effort" possible with another ham in terms of gear to make this a better situation. Either way, I should be looking at some kind of schedule so that people will know which band I'll be on at which time.

Experiments in local vertical VHF SSB

On Sunday (1/12), three of us tried to do two-metre simplex in SSB mode with vertical antennae. You may recall my previous post discussing this. It was not a glowing success, and we really didn't understand why.

N0YNT (Matt) and KD0UIH (Chuck) could work each other on 144.210, but I was more-or-less out of the conversation and below the noise level. UHF SSB operation on 432.200 was a failure for all involved.

Chuck and I had tried to do FM simplex on two metres before in November. I had expected it to go very well. After all, we were only 15 miles apart, and had 50W to work with. My reasoning was that, if I could reach a repeater in St. Paul with around five watts, I certainly should be able to reach Chuck in St. Paul with ten times that power.

And yet, I was wrong.
KD0UIH and I were unable to hear each other using VHF FM simplex. Instead, we had someone from the VHF .370 act as a relay, and we had to acknowledge that as a mysterious failure.

I didn't let the matter rest, though. There had to be some way to get simplex communications to work locally on VHF. Sure there was two-metre sideband, but that required a horizontal antenna, and we all had verticals. But we kept talking about it, and it dawned on us that we only needed a horizontal antenna to talk to other operators using a horizontal antenna. If everyone involved in the QSO was using a vertical antenna, then it should work. I was confident that a weak signal mode would succeed where FM's need for a strong signal had failed.

And yet, I was wrong.
My confidence had convinced me that I could get away with using a mag-mount dual-band 1/4-wave that tuned up to the SSB part of the band. It was a marginal antenna, but this was going to easy, so it didn't matter, right?

So last night (1/13), I had my very best VHF antenna mounted on my balcony after dark. I had confirmed that it tuned up on 144.210. I tried a few SSB transmissions, and found that it interfered with my TV reception, and created a little audio interference on the stereo. I shrugged and tuned around the local FM repeaters. I ran in to N0YNT and N0DSH (Frank) on the UHF .425, and we talked about the failure of the night before.

On a whim, I asked Matt if he was willing to try it again with the improved antenna on my end. He agreed, and we rolled up to 144.210 without a lot of expectation for success.

And yet, I was wrong.
This time, N0YNT came through clearly at a level of S8 from St. Paul! He gave me a similar report. Even better, KD0WZW (Pete) had been listening to the conversation on the .425 and he had come along for the ride. He gave Matt and I an S7 signal report from Lino Lakes, which is about what I had him at (maybe S6 at times). And all of us were using vertical antennae with a weak signal mode. The experiment was a success.

I guess that the problem was that I had chosen to use a lousy antenna for our first experiment. I had chalked the good signals between N0YNT and KD0UIH down to proximity, but the real factor was that they were both using decent antennae.

Due to the interference issues, I don't expect to do a lot of two-metre sideband work out of my place, vertical or otherwise. But it's something that I could set up as a portable or mobile option away from home.

This kind of thing isn't really compatible with the fading weak-signal two-metre work done by others around the State, because we are using vertical antennae. Yes, we've all heard stories of two-metre SSB QSOs using horizontal beams over long distances. None of us, however, have a horizontal antenna for the band. It's not practical for my location, and I'm happy with using a vertical considering that most other people don't have a two-metre horizontal antenna, either.

Just because I can't operate two-metre SSB out of my home, that doesn't preclude others from doing it, though. We basically just confirmed that it's possible for most hams to have simplex communications across the metro area with the vertical antenna that they already have. They need an all-mode radio, of course, and that means that an HT isn't going to do it. It's also different than the quiet of FM.

Still, for a Technician wishing to "upgrade" in the hobby, wouldn't local vertical VHF SSB be more practical than HF? 

HF operation needs a lot of yard, sympathetic neighbours, big antennae, and high power. Local vertical VHF SSB, however, allows a ham to use the same J-pole or ground-plane that they already have, while allowing them to get away from repeaters. The problem is, however, that it requires enough other vertically-oriented hams to make it viable. Communication with the old, horizontally-polarised community is not going to work.

As with everything else on ham radio, activity draws activity. If it were to become known that four or five hams were meeting on 144.210 on vertical SSB, it would attract people for the novelty alone. Roundtables would form, and new hams might be persuaded to look at all-mode gear. Who knows? It might lead to local (or regional) PSK31 activity (which is quiet) with vertical polarisation. With voice-to-text apps on smart-phones, and apps like DroidPSK, it might catch on.

But I've been wrong about this stuff before.

Vertical SSB: Hare-brained scheme or dangerous new trend?

I'm sort of interested in 2M SSB (and UHF SSB), but conventional wisdom dictates that horizontal antennae be used for "weak signal" modes like SSB (single-sideband). I don't have a horizontal 2M antenna, and it's not really practical for me at the condo. The other issue is that there's very few people doing two-metre weak signal.

The theory for using horizontal polarisation on SSB is that noise is vertically polarised, and horizontal antennae are therefore quieter. It's very old, even for conventional wisdom, and simple experimentation will show that a great deal of digital noise is now also horizontally polarised by virtue of travelling on power lines. The real reason for using horizontal polarisation is because everyone else that uses weak signal modes is using a horizontally polarised antenna. If you use a vertical, and the person you are trying to talk to is using a horizontal antenna, then you lose 20 dB -- translation: "It's not happening, dude".

But if everyone is using a vertical, then it's totally cool. You don't lose 20 dB, then. It's pretty much the same as everyone using a horizontal.

So a few of us crazy new hams that don't know any better were sitting around, talking crazy talk like we do. I said that we should try doing vertical two metre SSB simplex. We tried FM simplex, and we couldn't get any reasonable distance. But weak signal modes are different; you can hear them further away. After a little discussion, we decided that the whole thing was suitably crazy and worthy of our efforts.

At this point, four hams have "signed on": KD0UIH, KD0WZW, N0YNT, and KD0TLS (me). By signing on, we agree that, at some point, we'll try it. There's talk of a Sunday night effort already. And it could very well happen before then.

It's incredibly easy, after all. We all have vertical antennae, and we all have SSB radios for the band. We don't have to reach Bemidji. We can do weak signal simplex in the metro instead of FM. It should be interesting to see how much power we need, and if simple antennae can work satisfactorily. I don't think we're going to need Yagis or 50W of juice, but we'll find out.

I'm also interested in trying this with UHF. Ever since I read this short piece about UHF QRP SSB. Even with 5W and a Yagi, we should be able to reach 50 miles easily. It would be harder to get people together with UHF beams for an experiment like that, though. I do wonder, though, what kind of performance one could expect with 5W SSB and a vertical? Certainly, FM simplex is out of the question for those levels and antenna type.

UHF SSB with a Yagi is almost on the level of being clandestine. First off, not many are on UHF in the first place using FM. Second, of those that are there, nobody is listening for SSB. And third, the beam would restrict that unlikely-to-be-heard signal to the person you are trying to reach.