Colleagues,
When you give a contact report, please consider including power and
antennas (on both ends, if possible).
Jeff KH6O
Jeff is right. My report was a little bit vague.
As of yesterday I was back to running my 2-el Comtek array with 2 wire
verticals roughly oriented in the NE/SW plane about 1/4wl apart, so
under ideal condx, I can fire to EU or the USA or near omni (NW/SE with
.0001dB of gain to JA and Carib<smile>) The antennas are both wire
inverted-L types, very pathetic & sad looking.
They are both more like inverted letter "J's" than
L's...zig-zagging here and there with around 100' of wire, then
eventually over the top of a tree at 40' or 50' then coming back to
Earth pretty abruptly for the remaining 30-40' or whatever.
One has just 2 raised radials about 90* from one another at around 8 '
AGL; the other started out with 55 or 60 x 127' beautiful but expensive
copper #20 or #22 on-ground radials but after lawn mowing and critters
and what not I am probably closer to only a mile of wire in the ground
on this one now. It's a real dogs breakfast. I have no super tall trees
nor deep pockets, so I do what I can do. It's no measure of antenna
performance (strictly anecdotal) but between the former QTH in FN65 and
this QTH in FN66, I have about 100DXCC's at each QTH with similar
antennas, so a total of 200 or maybe 201 DXCC's on 1.8MHz. I long ago
stopped chasing DXCC's formally.
Because of ongoing SWR issues (nearby lightning strike), which I will
eventually iron out, I was running about 550W last night....but normally
I strive for the Canadian Maximum legal power which is technically 750W
key down on CW.
After putting back online the "good" vertical (a little
taller+ much more radials) I was sorta half hoping that all the juicy
RBN hits and the FB Q's I made last night were from my 6km of walking
and oodles of repairs, but it seems like it may have been mostly just
super condx. Oh well.
Jeff - thanks for reminding us that unless we know the 'working condx',
then who can say how good 'propagation condx' were? Same as sometimes
I'll read a report from an unknown to me W6 who says he was able to work
EU and I'll think "WOW", only to find out he lives in Ohio or
new Hampshire. Luckily Canadian Hams are easy to track by prefix.
dit dit
Mike VE9AA, Keswick Ridge, NB - FN66Na....2 el & 550W
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