At sunrise after breakfast Krassy and I.wired in a 180 delay transformer that
could be switched from the operating position to switch the 2 el array from
BROADSIDE to end FIRE - and also to unidirectional NE or SW.
Thus night 2 at 1030z was far better for us on Topband - DU7ET was there again
and we were ON TIME at 1015z for our SUNSET at 1033z.. Instantly N4WW was
worked with a respectable signal (this means we could hear.him at about RST
349.)
Since Dragan YT3W has the logs and I am now doing this from memory, I do not
remember if we then worked NO3M - or if it was the next night - but Eric became
our Northeastern most qso on 160M - so congrats top Eric for hearing us and for
making us be able to hear him (barely!) Water-weak like would aptly describe
our side of this qso (HI)
We worked quite a few USA mid-western and Far Western stations this night -
plus at least 300 Europeans. My son Patrick KK6ZM had a great signal near his
SR peakl - it was among the loudest signals we worked on night two.
At SR after this night, Krassy and I decided to take down the runway 160M
radiator, and use only the single 160m radiator - and we threw its 20 odd
radials into the salt water lagoon.
We moved this spider pole to the north side of theisland and plavced it on the
seawall - and used it fro 80M SSB thereafter.
We also decided we had to try to find a way to get a beverage up on 160M for RX
- even if it was only one that could be aimed at EU.
ZL3WW came up with a scheme to use the 2nd abandoned vertical feedline for this
beverage and by relocating the coax slightly we started at the runway and got a
NW beverage straight for about 800 feet toward the seawall - then we crossed a
pathway in the air - and ran it at least another 500 feet along the seawall.
This turned out to be a real gem - as we ran the table for HOURS into EU after
SR had passed in W6/W7. It made a huge difference in our ability to work the
2nd and 3rd tier EU callers.
It worked so well that ZL3WW and I tried our hand the next afternoon on a USA
beverage to the NE.
The plan was to switch the feedline to the USA at our SS and then at 1 430
after W7 SR move the feedline over to the EU beverage again, This was easy to
do at 10:30PM in the dark as it was an open field and with a flashlight it took
all of 5 mins.
This was a pretty fair beverage - about 650 feet long - straight as an arrow -
but it also ran close to the hotel complex for most of its run. As I
feared,this one was not stone cold quiet like the Eu beverage was - when I
switched to it there was some kind of background hash that covered up most
weaker signals. Listening on the EU beverage did not work well either towards
NA - as while it was super quiet - it was at least 90 degrees off of a true NE
shortpath NA heading - some USA signals could be heard on it - but not the East
Coast weaker guys we desperately wanted to work.
So night 4 we spent listening for NA on the single 160m vertical located at the
seawall - and listened to EU on its quieter NW beverage.
AGAIN Eu was bedlam all night long - 160M to NA was only so so - we worked
into the mid west and then the NW USA at their SR pretty well.
Near SR Krassy who had departed for 80CW late into the EU opening - went to
sleep - and YT3W took over near our SR grayline peak.
I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw his 80 CW Grayline contacts come onto
my screen.
In the space of 10 mins, he logged K1CP (Maine), N1RJ (also Maine) - and W1JR
(NH) - followed by PY5EG - Atilano - and then the LP sunset peak had passed on
the eastern seaboard of NA because we went into daylight on our side at SR.
Next email I will talk about our final night on Topband - which was our last
night at SS on Layang Layang.
Jeff Briggs
DXing on the Edge: The Thrill of 160 Meters
Available worldwide through BookBaby, Array Solutions, DX Engineering, Royal
Society of Great Britain, & Amazon
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