Owen Duffy wrote:


Or... is there some other better way of measuring station receive
performance?

Owen
--

Several of the EME software programs, such as TRACKER for MS machines,
or Palmtrack for Palm OS, will give the noise temperature at several
frequencies. Google for "EME tracking scheduling".

You could also get help from one of the 2 EME nets on 20m. They run
from approximately 1000 through 1230 Eastern time on 14345. If you
can't check in, you can listen to the net on the first link at
http://taring.org using WMP or any other mp3 streamer, and you can email
your question to Joe, K1RQG_ _@_ _aol.com (remove the clutter to use)
and he will likely get the net to respond with lots of information for
you. Checking there would get you the best answers on sky noise.

Alternatively, the sun is easy to find, and the numbers are published
daily for at least 2 frequencies. The problem is extrapolating those
numbers to as low as 2 meters. Discussions recently say the best known,
most used, equation probably is not correct, even at 1296, and will be
even less accurate at 432, let alone 2 meters. There was a corrected
one suggested, but I would take any of them as untrustworthy at this
time. Again, the EME net may be of help, as many net participants take
regular, even daily, sun noise measurements at 1296. They can also give
you tips on avoiding errors and calibrating.

tom
K0TAR