Richard (G3CWI) published an interesting blog article Comparison of groundwave performance of Small Transmitting Loop and Quarterwave GP summarising a recent WSPR test on 40m over 20km distance.
This article is a walk through of the expected WSPR receive S/N for the case of the 20mW tx on a quarter wave vertical.
100% efficient tx and rx antenna systems
Ground wave suffers attenuation due to two key components:
- dispersion of energy as the wave spreads out from the source; and
- absorption of energy in heating the soil.
Item (1) is simply inverse square law effect, and Norton provides us with several approximations for estimating (2) from Sommerfields work.
Calculate efficiency of vertically polarised antenna from far field strength uses Norton’s f5 approximation for ground wave attenuation.
Above is a calculation for a 100% efficient transmitter. (The trick to getting this is to leave the measured field strength field empty and the calculator will insert the value that gives 100% efficiency.)
So the next question is what ambient noise level might we expect in a rural setting on 40m. Continue reading G3CWI’s ground wave tests Jul 2017 using WSPRlite