My county's RACES group runs an NVIS net every Tuesday at 6:00pm. I'm
not a member, but I occasionally check in as a guest, and often listen
to the summary reported later in the evening over the local VHF
repeater. We're a very hilly county in earthquake country -- RACES
plans to use ridgetop VHF repeaters for emcom if available, with NVIS HF
as a backup if the repeaters fail.
The net is always run on 40m, 80m, and one other band, often 60m. Most
people are running in the neighborhood of 100W. I've checked in with a
KX3 and a longwire loop at 10W. It usually works, but it's not
consistent -- then again, nobody's equipment is consistent. The bands
vary quite a bit. Because 6:00pm is nighttime in the winter, and
daylight in the summer, there is some seasonal variation in which bands
work best (80m night, 40m day is a good rule of thumb, but it doesn't
hold 100%). There is also some apparently random fluctuation in which
bands work best from one week to the next, probably correlated with
solar activity. Sometimes they all work really well. Other times
nothing works really well, though we can usually find some way to at
least relay messages around our county on some band or another.
There's a difference between, "I've managed to make contact with this
equipment" and "I can very reliably contact the person I need to reach
with this equipment". I'm sure a KX3 with a Buddipole can make NVIS
contacts. But I'd expect that to get really reliable communications,
you'll at least want to have various prearranged calling frequencies on
different bands, and you'll want to continually test your setup by doing
repeated drills at different times of day, under different solar
conditions.
I'll echo what others have said about using a good antenna. I own a
Buddipole and really like it, but for 40m or 80m, it helps to have
longer radiating elements. Using the Buddipole mast, arms, and coils,
but tying some long sloping wires to the ends to make an inverted vee
may be one of many strategies you could try.
73 de Rich/AG6QR
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