I’ve been GRABBED, on QRSS
Posted by Jack on April 5th, 2012
This morning I was grabbed on QRSS. Let me explain: QRSS is CW sent REALLY slow (hence QRSs) using automated low power transmitters. I built one of the Hans Summers MEPT kits for 30m and have had it running when I’m around the shack:
“Grabbers” are stations that are listening using programs like Argo or QRSS viewer or MultiPSK to analyze a very tiny sub-band (like 200 Herz or so) and do a screen-capture, or ‘screen-GRAB’ of the waterfall at regular intervals. A ‘grab’ is someone seeing your callsign in their grabber archive.
W4HBK, who runs the ‘Pensacola Snapper‘, sent me an email this morning with this attached:
My QRSS ‘beacon’ puts out a ‘whopping’ 100milliwatts. It is connected to an Inverted-L cut for 160m but tuned with an antenna tuner for 30m.
Here’s a close-up of my signal from the W4HBK 10-minute archives: