Hello Tom,
I'm not in your same situation, but would suggest considering a low
horizontal loop for close in stations. It gives a very good NVIS signal
which it seems to me would help you into Tennessee. I've suggested the loop
to the local ham club and a two people (that I know of) have put them up and
are happy with their coverage in SC, GA and NC. They also make DX contacts
on them and I've heard a couple others intend to put them up since we're all
having good luck with it. I use a 272 ft loop up 20 to 25 ft and feed it
with about a 50 ft run of bury flex coax to a DX Engineering 4:1 Balun. I
have good SWR at some point on 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10. A tuner gives full
band coverage on all those bands. I first fed it directly with coax and
wasn't happy. Many choose to feed it with ladder line to cut their feed line
loss, but I didn't want to deal with the lightening protection and wall
penetration issues of ladder line. You can read about the low loop either on
line or in the ARRL Antenna books. It's often called a Loop Skywire.
This is completely anecdotal but in 2006, shortly after changing to the 4:1
balun, I entered the SC QSO party and took first place in the state. I
overheard several stations talking about me. They hadn't heard me on the air
before and did not believe I was only running a 100 watts because of how
loud I was. They were comparing me to other stations in my general area
which was about 150 to 180 miles from them. They weren't very aggressive
contesters, focused almost exclusively on working SC stations, and since I
took advantage of the Salmon Run stations from Washington State to both give
and get points for the two contests it wasn't too surprising an
inexperienced contester such as myself was able to get a plaque. Never
entered again though, I don't much care for it.
If you have the room, give the loop a shot. It might help.
Kevan
N4XL
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