Iceland: three people per square km ----- Original Message ----- From: Tracey Gardner <tracey.gard...@talktalk.net> To: topband@contesting.com Sent: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 02:30:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Topband: Skimmer calibration
Hello Mike You forget that on this side of the pond, the majority of us live on pocket handkerchief sized plots. :-) The representative of a major building company in the UK was on TV yesterday saying that 1000 sq ft was plenty big enough for a three bedroomed house. I imagine that would be the area of one room in a lot of houses in the USA. Even a K9AY needs a 30ft by 30ft space with a central support and a lot of new builds here don't even have gardens that size. You've only got to look at the population densities to begin to see the problem Population density (people per sq. km of land area) USA - 35 UK - 265 Netherlands - 498 France - 121 Germany - 231 Italy - 203 We'd all love to have the space to put up phased arrays or Beverages and even a Flag, K9AY, EWE, is out of the question for a large number of us. And as for quiet locations well for the vast majority of us those again are a thing of the past unless you go out portable. Switched mode power supplies and cheap plasma TVs etc have seen to that. Nothing comes with a good old linear power supply nowadays and any power supply coming out of the Far East has got to be suspect 73s Tracey G5VU On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 5:33 AM, Mike Waters <mikew...@gmail.com> wrote: > When I last investigated, all the skimmers and Web SDRs that were outside > of North America all had terrible receive antennas for copying DX signals > on 160. (And who knows how many of them are in quiet locations?) > > When I say "terrible", I mean small "magnetic" loops, very short whips, > low dipoles, a random end-fed wire, etc. No phased arrays or Beverages, > and not even a Flag, K9AY, EWE, etc. > > Does anyone know if that is still the case? > > 73, Mike > www.w0btu.com > _________________ > _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband