Hi Ron & fred et al
I had fun on 432. It was great to see real activity on a UHF band. It
was also fun to play with the new (well,not quite new... It has been
sitting on the tower for seven years and unconnected!) 4 X 15 element
array that is all stacked vertically, so it has a 30 degree beamwidth in
the horizontal plane but it must be about 8 degrees in the vertical
plane. I was hoping that it would ease the aiming situation. I have a
quad array of 25 element yagis, and if you are not pointing at the
station, you will not work them!! Well, the new antenna worked great. At
one point, WZ1V said he thought he copied W1AIM but lost him. I swung
the 4 x 15 els around to northern Vermont, where it is almost Winter
time again, and immediately found Chip, I could then flip a switch and
alert Ron and K1PXE that W1AIM was in fact there. Easy-peasey! The 30
degree bw is pretty good for finding stations too.
I think I worked about the same crew as Ron. I did a lot of listening
playing with the newly completed antenna. I never worked KC2KAE, but I
think I worked another station out on Cape Cod. There is quite a bit of
difference between the two antennas, and this brings up a sorta
important point. I had always believed that as long as you had your
antenna clearing the trees, and your horizon stayed the same as you
raised the antenna, then not much would be gained. That is not always
true. At times, the lower 4 x 15 (60 ft) was almost as loud at the 4 x
25 up at 105 ft, but then I would see times when the signals got really
loud on the high antenna while the lower antenna did not see the
increases. The bottom line is that the higher antenna can be capable of
catching QSB events that a lower antenna might not see. I could be all
wet on this, but that was what I was seeing when comparing the two
antlers. That being said, last week on Wednesday, I worked KO4YC on the
4 x 25s and quickly switched to the 4 x 15s at 60 ft, and I could still
hear KO4YC. He was a bit weaker on the smaller yagi.
There were many great signals heard last night. K3GNC with his low
power was quite consistent, while KC3BVL and WA2LTM almost sounded like
locals!
73
Dave K1WHS
On 9/1/2022 9:56 AM, Ron Klimas WZ1V wrote:
Last night activity on 432 really took off.
Good buddy Dave K1WHS was knocking them off like flies
with his new 4x15 flyswatter. I only managed to work 15:
0107 wz1v 432125.0 KC2KAE FN20>FN31
0102 wz1v 432150.0 WA2LTM FN20>FN31
0058 wz1v 432150.0 W1AIM FN34>FN31
0054 wz1v 432150.0 N1DPM FN32>FN31
0051 wz1v 432150.0 WA1T FN43>FN31
0041 wz1v 432150.0 KC3BVL FM29>FN31
0038 wz1v 432150.0 KB1GMX FN42>FN31
0030 wz1v 432150.0 K3GNC FN20>FN31
0030 wz1v 432150.0 K1PXE FN31>FN31
0025 wz1v 432100.0 N1LHP FN42>FN31
0023 wz1v 432100.0 KA1W FN31>FN31
0022 wz1v 432100.0 K1DY FN54>FN31
0022 wz1v 432100.0 W3CJK FN41>FN31
0020 wz1v 432100.0 WA1PBU FN42>FN31
0019 wz1v 432100.0 K1WHS FN43>FN31
73 Ron WZ1V
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