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ATGP 2013 - Equinox Mountain - 22 July 2013

This was the first year for Equinox and it solved the previous two year New Hampshire gap by providing 100% successful transmission to MTWASH-13.

In addition, EQINOX-12 copied MTWASH-13 solidly 100% of the time on the 445.925 MHz FM channel. Surprisingly, in spite of all kinds of antennas on the summit of Mt. Equinox, I experienced no interference.

MTWASH-13 on the other hand complained, from time to time, of having some interference and did have some some trouble copying me. Generally however, I would say we were successful in coordinating on the 445.925 MHz channel.

I tried to record the signal strengths, but being a first-timer, I was consumed with doing a lot of other things.

Having said that, I believe the TM-D710A has 7 bars in its signal strength meter and I recall seeing MTWASH-13 light up all of them (7 of 7).

When I did hear GRYLC K-11, I recall seeing they were lighting up 2 of 7. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice a similar reading for SAMSPT-10.

I’m hoping to do this next year when I’ll be more familiar with what to expect and I can be more focused on recording “signal strengths”.

73, Richard, N2SPI

I just uploaded my packet log for today (Golden Packet Day of course!).

Try this link:

  • LINK TO PACKET LOG

If that didn’t work, it’s in the AT-GOLDEN-PACKET files section with the title “2013 Golden Packet Log for EQINOX-12”.

I don’t have much time to comment, but quickly:

  1. Careful examination of the log will show EQINOX-12 heard SAMSPT-10 direct…, a lot. However, for some reason (propagation? someone moved an antenna? other??) I didn’t hear them much later on. Perhaps this link needs to be strengthened with, say, low noise preamps and/or yagi antennas (just as we do with satellites).

  2. MTWASH-13 came in like gangbusters…, all day long. I never had a suspicion that I had missed a packet transmission from MTWASH-13. I always saw my beacon digipeated by MTWASH-13, never GRYLCK-11.

73, Richard, N2SPI