[TowerTalk] Observation - TJ3FR and propagation

[dennis o'connor <k8do@mailblocks.com>]

I have not in the decades past paid any attention to 75/80 meters other 
than just another band to make Q's during a contest...  Pushing on 
towards my seventh decade of life I have finally made some changes to 
reduce my standard 14 hour work day to a mere 12 hours and so I am 
getting back into active operation; and decided to do some DXing on 80M 
as a "new thrill'...  Since I have in recent weeks been playing with 
antennas, and paying attention to and getting on around greyline, 
morning and evening, I am noticing some thngs I didn't happen to notice 
in my previous 40 years of hamming...

The most striking thing I have noticed is the consistency of 80m 
propagation from the midwest, Michigan, into Africa, and specifically 
Cameroon, every evening... I think since I started listening for TJ3FR 
there has been only one evening - during the time period of roughly 
2300Z to 0100Z  - that I have not heard them, so that is roughly 9 days 
out of 10... In mulling it over, and I have zero information on their 
power and antennas, it is clear that there is much 80m propagation 
between the USA and Africa that goes unnoticed and unused simply due to 
the lack of active stations in that part of the world...  Pity, that... 
 The other thing I noticed is that the SSB DX guys in the 10 kc DX 
window are fewer but more consistently active than CW DXers over the 
entire rest of 75/80 meters...

To more specifically relate this to TowerTalk, I have noted that  
shortened verticals mounted at ground level are consistently better DX 
performers than an inverted vee at 95 feet apex...   The next series of 
experiments will compare a ground mounted, shortened, 3 element 
parasitic array, against a quarter wave single element vertical with 2, 
and then 4, elevated radials...  Given that the ground mounted array 
has 4.5dB more gain in the forward direction (per EZnec) one would 
conclude that that the elevated vertical will lose by a bunch... Having 
worked Heard Island on 160 from Michigan with an elevated vertical, I 
suspect there are some real world surprises in store...

Denny - K8DO

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