On Apr 7, 2006, at 8:45 PM, Walt Armour wrote:
Well, I'm in Beaverton so try to keep the big cats out west. I'll
just
watch for the local raccoons here. :)
On the antenna though, I don't think the tree is feasible due to
location. The ridge line (on some poles for a touch more height) is
quite doable and could easily feed into where my radio will one day
be.
However, I'm a little concerned about the signal going too vertical
and
having a bad angle on the horizon.
Should I be considering a vertical antenna if I really want to DX?
New guy here so please correct any bad assumptions I'm making...
Walt, KE7GWZ
I don't have any usable trees on my lot (unusual for the NW) and when
I moved here (Bainbridge Island, WA) six years ago I put up a wire
antenna about three feet above the ridge line of the house and
attached garage. The garage part was at a right angle to the house
part. It was about 65 feet long on one leg and 34 feet on the
other. I fed it at the corner with coax and used a MFJ tuner,
although for some bands the tuner on my TS-570D would match things
fairly well by itself (this was before I built my K2).
I didn't really expect much in the way of performance, but our local
DX club had a "friendly competition" in 2001 to see who could work
the most DX in one year running QRP levels. I couldn't really
compete with the guys who had beams (one guy worked over 240
countries), but I did work 100 countries (plus several more running
QRO) using that antenna using all bands from 40 to 10 meters. That
was much better than I had expected, but of course it was at a
different part of the sunspot cycle and propagation was much better
than it is currently.
I replaced it with a Hy-Gain AV-640 vertical mounted to a piece of 2
in pipe I strapped to the side of the house. I have had better
results with the vertical, but the ridge line antenna did more than
just warm the clouds.
73,
Bob, N7XY
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