Rockmite Log 22/12/25: Maui!!!

The Rockmite ham radio could be heard in Mauii on a software defined radio (SDR) yesterday afternoon on 20 meters! I decided to try the station on a lark more to verify what I thought "couldn't" happen than anything else, and there the little Rockmite was CWing away in the static.

Here's a recording of the signal:

Interesting things to note about this:

First, a geodesic drawn through and at a perpendicular to the antenna, roughly, points in the direction Utah (lots of contacts with Utah), and Maui.

Second, the antenna is located on the East Side of a ridge line. The feedpoint is maybe 3 feet above the ground as seen from Maui. As seen from the East, the antenna is 120 metes about sea level, (and the Bay), per Google Earth. From the ground that you can actually stand on below the antenna the feeed point is about 20 feet up.

For those who haven't been following along, the antenna is an inverted vee halfwave dipole suspended outside the kitchen window supported on twine attached to the fences below. The ariels are 14 gauge bell wire. The feed point sports a BNC to banana plug adapter.

References:

Maui SDR HF listening for the Rockmite

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