by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO
STATIONS THAT can be heard marginally in the Winter on 75 meters are often totally uncopyable in the Summer. The reason? Summertime background noise levels — due to nearby or distant thunderstorm static — are often ten or twenty times higher in the warm months of the year than they are in Winter. This means that to be heard as well as you are in the cold months, you would have to run ten or twenty times as much power during warm weather.
There are two lessons to be learned here: 1) If you can, run ten or twenty times the power you’re running now; and 2) never use a small, low, or compromise antenna — they can cut your effective power to as little as one tenth your actual power, and that can be a fatal reduction when you’re fighting static or interference.
Listen: Liberty Net 7/2″]
Here’s my selection from among the topics debated on this week’s net session, along with my remarks:
• Vanessa Brown, an obese Black Pennsylvania state representative from the Africanized city that is still called Philadelphia (and who, by the way, is awaiting trial on corruption charges), has demanded that display of the Confederate flag should be forbidden, even in historical displays and during Civil War reenactments — unless the participants, in the vague, rambling words of Brown, somehow “tell the truth” (Brown’s “truth,” something about “hate and oppression”) about the flag. She even stole a flag out of an historical display at the state capitol and only returned it when she was threatened with arrest. She then lobbied the craven, cowardly governor of Pennsylvania, who subsequently ordered all Confederate-linked flags removed from the historical display. (19 minutes)