The days are starting to get shorter and the evenings cooler. This
has brought out the dormant symptoms of Top Band Disease.
On Friday morning, Steve VK6VZ worked a bunch of west coast stations.
His excellent signal was captured on the topband sounds page at
http://www.contesting.com/n6tr/topband.
That night after picking up N5KO at the airport, we found EM1HO and
VP2EXM (04:26 and 04:40).
Saturday morning was not very productive, but things really improved
Sunday.
As already reported, VK6HD had a good run. Listened hard for VQ9SS,
but there was no signal here. We hope to work Pres sometime between
now and Novemeber. It looks like late September or early October
might be good - although his sunset is already 20 minutes before my
sunrise.
Sunday evening (Monday UTC time), was topband at its finest! First,
K1ZM checked in with a 10 db over S9 signal around 0400. This is
many db louder than Jeff was during several previous QSOs during
the last week. Jeff reported that CX4SS was on 1833, but I didn't
hear anything (new country). I will be listening hard for this one
around my sunset.
Then I heard some dits and dahs up around 1832, which turned out to be
the first signal from Europe for the new season!! IV3PRK was there, but
the QRN was too loud to copy him well. I could copy an occasional
letter was all.
Jeff tried to get us two together, but I guess Luis got confused
and QSYed.
The excitement wasn't over yet - after Jeff worked another European,
Bernie ZS4TX showed up and was in the log at 04:26. Bernie didn't
have his big signal that we heard last January, but he was easy copy
and said I was peaking 569. W6DAO also made it and it didn't seem
like anyone else was around. Trey was asleep and missed it all.
Looking forward to that first European QSO, and if Bernie shows up
and I can find a South American, we could be pretty high on the
first WAC list!
In other news, Trey and I put up a MU antenna for 80 meters. I had
heard several people rave about these antennas and wanted to try one
for myself. Initial tests show it to have a low angle of radiation
and effective when compared to my other antennas. The antenna is
basically a 2 turn loop, with about 2 wavelengths of wire. It
looks like a squished rectangle about 23 feet on the vertical sides
and 113 feet on the top/bottom. It is described in the second
ARRL Antenna Compendium on page 39. The antenna is mounted just
a few feet above ground - so no part of my 80 meter antenna is over
30 feet high.
KF7E is going to try one on 160. I think this would be a very interesting
antenna for 160 and hope more people try it. Perhaps I will put one
up here - if I can talk my wife into letting me use part of the horse
pasture. Could also be an interesting alternate to the vertical for
dx-pedition work.
See you on THE band!
Tree N6TR/7
tree@contesting.com
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