> I have not had time to build a new antenna for 160 so I tried the DX sloper.
> I could hear pretty well with several stations over S9 so I tried throwing my
> call in a couple of times at 100 watts and got no response. I hesitate to
> use much power on the sloper because NU5D warned me his end insulator caught
> fire. Anyway I tried again at 500 watts, still nobody could hear me so I
> risked it and tried 1kw, still no response. Then I figured if this antenna
> is so worthless I will try again pushing the limit but still got no response
> at 1500+ so this antenna must be totally worthless. I cannot get any higher
> than 60' for the center and one tower has too many antennas on it to try to
> use it for a vertical and my other tower is a crankup 3 section. I plan to
> try the linear loaded dipole soon and see if it will work.
> WB5OXQ
FWIW,
My station is not a big gun. I'm running about a KW into an Inv-L, 40
radials with half on a salt marsh & the other ones on the bog beside
it. The salt marsh & damp soil give me a really nice radial field and
the K9ay is on the marsh. I have a K3 so I hear as good as I'm going
to with this amp & antenna. I am amazed how many times I have to call
some DX before they come to my call. Sometimes I hear nobody calling
the DX (understandable from so far away) but the DX is not calling to
anyone.
I know my signal isn't that of a super station but it's not chopped
liver either.
I think what happens a lot has to do with where people have their
filters set. I notice people calling maybe 100-200Hz off to the side
of center frequency and the DX often goes to them and I need to
either use split or the XIT to transmit off freq I listen to them on
their transmitted freq. Not really split operation but kind of a mini
split.
So either their filters have an uncorrected offset or they have a
discrepency between transmit and rx elsewhere.
Just a guess but what I see in practice supports this hypothesis.
Last night I just didn't bother to waste time trying to work a lot of
those stations as the next one was usually listening dead on.
Gary
KA1J
_______________________________________________
Topband mailing list
Topband@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/topband
|