[Lowfer] [Hifer] NC GA RY

[John Andrews]

Eric,

> What do you suggest?  In the next day or two I'm going to bring LowFER UWL
> out of "summertime mode" and start running DFCW, 30 or 60 second elements.
> How much shift do you like to see?  I was contemplating about 0.3 Hz, but
> that's just a gut guess, and not based on any personal experience.

Here's what I've been using:
3 Sec  5 Hz
10 Sec   1 Hz
30 Sec  0.5 Hz
60 Sec  0.2 Hz
120Sec  0.1 Hz
There's nothing magic about that, and there certainly is no "standard."  I
believe that I just copied what some of the U.K. guys were doing.

One hint: I think the Argo screens look best for DFCW if you run them at
half speed. For example, near the 185.300 "watering hole" where QRSS30 is
standard, I usually run DFCW60. On a 30 second Argo screen, each element is
the same size as the 60 second ticks at the bottom of the screen. The 0.2 Hz
shift is perfectly readable on the Argo 30 second screen.

> This is my first season to run a HiFER.  Do most shut down at the end of
> the summer?  Why?

Short attention span? Actually in my case, the RY site is unheated and not
very accessible in the winter. The temperature stability of the el cheapo 50
MHz clock oscillator is horrible, and I have no idea how far out of whack it
would go. Since the Hifer interest seems to drop off, I've just been
shutting the thing down and lowering the vertical dipole for the season.

John A.