They seem to be struggling with poor reception and noise.
I was calling them for 2 nights straight on FT8 while their signal was very
strong on an inverted L. Even VK's with better antennas than mine seemed to be
struggling to be heard. They are located in our backyard and it was tough!
I thought I had a faulty antenna, however I exchanged reports with general US
FT8 stations with good reports. My feeling was that they had their RX antenna
pointed towards JA and for VK stations we were in the noise because of the FB
of the DHDL RX antenna.
There also was a consistent wall of JA's calling on FT8. On my BOG I could
decode all the US and JA callers simultaneously. Everyone calling from the US
was strong and they should have had no issues working any station in the USA
that call based on the signal strength in VK.
The window was covered with a smear of JA signals. Since the average NA
signals were sitting at -10 to -15 on FT8 while JA's were probably 10 to 20 Db
stronger it would have been a struggle even for stations with 4 Squares. Their
run rate seemed rather poor considering the number of stations calling(mostly
JA)
It was tough for all callers.
73
Craig ,, VK3OD
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