First, my thanks to all those who have helped me with
advice and materials in relation to flags and
pennants. Due to your kind generosity, I have the
filters, transformers and terminations I need in order
to pursue some experiments with these antennas.
I precariously erected an experimental pennant antenna
last Saturday. After the ARRL contest on 10 meters
died out, I went to 160 meters around 0030 UTC. Much
to my surprise, I heard numerous R5 signals on the
pennant that were down in the noise on the
transmitting antenna. I had 17 QSO's before my
reception petered out. Among them were four from
"across the pond", W8JI, VE1ZZ, W1JR and AA1QD. At
daylight Sunday morning, I discovered that one of my
supports had wilted and caused the pennant to close up
on itself. That might have been what happened when my
reception died.
I need to devise some better temporary masts. I'm
using some plastic pipe that is too flexible. Perhaps
when I find time I will send S50U a photo of these
floppy "creations" so he can picture them on the S9SS
web page on his site. It might be good for a laugh.
I understand the flag is supposed to be about 5dB
better than the pennant, so I plan to attempt to get
my floppy masts to support that configuration for a
trial this weekend.
I am greatly heartened by last weekend's success. I
hope it wasn't a fluke. The Equatorial QRN still
doesn't allow me to hear mediocre signals, but the
situation appears to be very greatly improved.
My late night 160 meters operation is limited to
Friday and Saturday nights. I'll also try to be QRV
on some holiday eves. Don't despair if you fail to
log me this year. I expect to be QRV at least through
the 2003/2004 northern hemisphere winter season.
I have been hanging out down around 1816 since the
DX-Summit usually shows a lot of activity in the 1820
to 1840 range, much of which I still can't hear.
73,
Charles - S9SS
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