Eureka, California
40.78° N 124.181° W
Grid: CN70ws
Eureka is located in the middle of Humboldt County, California. Humboldt County is in Northern California, on the coast, about 80 miles south of the Oregon border.
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The rig is a Kenwood TS-440S, with a PS-430 power supply. Also pictured is my Vibroplex Bug and straight key. Not visible in the photo, is a Vibroplex Scotia EK-1. Note the absence of a microphone. CW is my favorite mode.
I'm starting this website with what I have. I now wish I'd photographed all my gear over the years, and taken the camera with me to every field day and other ham event. Well now's the time to start, and I plan to add more as time permits.
For now (2007), I'm limited to listening while I bring my copying skills back up to par. The antenna is miserable: random wire, poorly matched and grounded, so my signal sounds QRP at QRO (barefoot) power. As I write, we're at the low point in the 11 year sunspot cycle, so I have plenty of time to get up and running.
Update (2010): Have been making some contacts. The TS-440S is now battery powered. It was amazing how noise-free and quiet the bands were during the power failure following the January 9 earthquake. Quiet that is, except for ham signals. No S-7 "white" noise that seems to have come up out of nowhere during the years when I was QRT. It sounds like the hiss between FM broadcast stations on a radio without FM muting. I am told that's just the way the bands are now, with so many electronic devices in use, all putting out small amounts of "hash", but the cumulative effect is sometimes in the S-5 to S-9 range.
During the power failure, I was able to hear signals all over the bands. When the power was restored, only the loudest signals were heard over the noise. Experiments with a receiving loop tells me the "white" noise is coming from all around. Less strong lower frequency "man-made" noise, such as from television sets, can be determined to come from specific directions, and usually has intensity peaks at various intervals across the receiver dial.
The white noise has no periodicity as you tune across the band. It's just there, all the time. It's higher on some bands, lower on others, but it has a rather constant intensity across a given band. Since cable and telephone lines run along the same power poles as the AC mains, driving around mobile doesn't give me much clue as to the source. If you have a solution or similar unsolved problem, please contact me using my contact page.
See you on the bands.
73, de KB6NN
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Humboldt Amateur Radio Club since 1977.
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Ten-Ten International since 1979. #25696
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