SWL with HF-150

Lowe HF-150 & Howes Filter

After switching on last weekend and hearing nothing but contests, I decided to set up my old Lowe HF-150.
The idea being that I can do a bit of SW broadcast listening when tinkering on the bench with other things.
So I didn't tie up the main HF aerials , an old Howes AA-2 active aerial dipole was installed in the attic space.This set up works quite well in conjunction with another Howes kit, a dual bandwidth audio filter - in case of QRM .
I had forgot how nice a strong AM station can sound on the Lowe set through a reasonable speaker or headphones.
Also have a Datong active aerial but this proved a little too strong for the HF-150 with it's wide open front end, causing overloading and spurious signals.Perhaps a few metres of wire and a 'magnetic' balun outside, may prove more suitable.

Howes AA2 Active Aerial

RBN reporting attic doublet

I was quite surprised to see a reverse beacon report from N7TR in Reno, Nevada ! which is around 5,000 miles short path. This was on 28Mhz CW, 5 watts qrp into a doublet in the attic.
Just shows when 10m is open you can use  qrp and wet string..

rows to show:   5  10  15  20  25  30  40  50  100  showing spots for DX call: MW0IAN  search spot by callsign
de	dx	freq	cq/dx	snr	speed	time
OL5Q	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	10 dB	18 wpm	1742z 20 Oct
W3LPL	MW0IAN	28061.1	CQ	2 dB	18 wpm	1649z 20 Oct
N7TR	MW0IAN	28061.1	CQ	8 dB	18 wpm	1646z 20 Oct
IK3STG	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	8 dB	18 wpm	1640z 20 Oct
DR1A	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	6 dB	18 wpm	1640z 20 Oct
DJ3AK	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	16 dB	18 wpm	1639z 20 Oct
S50ARX	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	10 dB	18 wpm	1639z 20 Oct
ES5PC	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	12 dB	18 wpm	1639z 20 Oct
EI6IZ	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	20 dB	18 wpm	1639z 20 Oct
DK9IP	MW0IAN	10129.0	CQ	17 dB	18 wpm	1639z 20 Oct