Re: Topband: Best 160 antenna
Wow! What a question to ask on this site. Gary, every member has an answer. Back as far as the 70's I asked that question of about 80 160 DXers world wide. I had more than 60 of them answer with diagrams, charts, results, pictures and descriptions. Eventually a summary of the survey was published in QST as a part of an article about a top loaded vertical using available parts. I think the results of the survey are still applicable today. You can access it at QST_Dec_1974_p15-19_28.pdf in the ARRL QST archives. The name of the article is "The Minooka Special." My answer to your question is that I want to have an efficient vertical of one kind or another, an efficient, low noise horizontal like a full wave loop, and a directional receiving array. Best DX, 73, Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Topband: P.O.A.
Brian, your comments about digital modes made me think back on times "BDM," (before digital modes). The occurrence I'm about to describe clarified what it takes for me to feel accomplishment in the "on the air" part of Ham radio. This happened over 40 years ago. While I was on one of 20 trips to South America that allways included operating from HK0, San Andres, a lifelong buddy of mine in Illinois drove out to our home and asked my wife to let him fire up my station. He got on the air and worked two DXpeditions at a couple very rare locations, using my call. He knew I didn't have those two and they might not be on again for many years. While he was there, he filled out QSL cards for the contacts, took them with him and sent them out. Neither he nor my wife or daughters mentioned this occurrence to me. Getting the cards would be the big surprise. So later, when the cards came, I looked at the date and started asking questions. My buddy was all giddy about what he had done for me. Everybody gets their jollies in different ways and that's what makes the world go around. I can't think of a reason why I would complain about how others get theirs. But I remember looking at those cards and realizing that they meant nothing to me. There was no satisfaction in the fact that they had been worked from my station, because I was not part of the equation. . I thanked my buddy. For him, his jollies came from getting in the log and getting the cards, by any means possible. I respect that and didn't argue. He laughed and said "Those were P.O.A. contacts." That means "power of attorney." I wasn't happy until I had worked those two entities myself. This all made it clear to me how I get satisfaction from on-the-air contacts. 73, Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Topband: Topband Dinner-Dayton
It was great to see so many old 160 friends... old being the operative word. Tim Duffy and Tree did a good job and all the rest who worked on the event should be lauded for their effort. Nicely done, gang. 73, Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: Verticals by the sea
This is purely anecdotal. I visited San Andres Providencia Islands twenty times between 1970 and 1990. I always operated 160 during those visits. On three occasions, at three different locations, I set up a 43 foot Minooka Special within 30 feet of the waters edge and had some radials running out into the sea. On the rest of the trips I operated from the QTH of HK0BKX, HK0DMA, HK0COP or one of the other resident Hams. They were all 2000-3000 feet inland from the sea. You can't get much further from the water because San Andres is 7.5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. The difference in success between waters edge and a half mile inland was like night and day using the same antenna system. The seaside locations usually brought us twenty over nine reports from the US as well as Europe using 100 watts on 160. We even ran phone patches on 160, There was no satellite phone service in the earlier years. On Providencia we used a 130 foot wire from our second story room at the Aury Hotel. It ran over a salt marsh/lagoon to the second story window of a house. We warned the owner to stay away from the end of that wire. We fed it against the hotel plumbing system. It worked surprisingly well. BTW, as an aside, the telephone system between San Andres and Providencia in those days was a couple 100 watt RCA SSB rigs on 5.3 mHz feeding dipoles about 30 feet high. The islands are 50 miles apart. Carrier pidgeons would have worked better. 73, Barry _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: BCB interference ?
I have a 50 KW station on 1530, eight miles north of me. They have a six element in-line array aimed south at Mexico... and me. They tore up every rig I've had in the shack until I went to a K3. We have two K3s and have no problem on either of them with BCB other than weak birdies on 1820 and a few other multiples of ten on 160 and 80. Rigs like the IC7000, and the FT857, a TS850s and others have hash from that station across the whole HF range. Even the TenTec Omni 6+ was plagued with junk everywhere. Many years ago I borrowed a commercial sharp-knee hi-pass filter from AA1K. I forget who made it but you could ask Jon. It may have been a NQN unit. The filter was made to take the power output of a 150 watt rig. That did the job for most all rigs. I duplicated the filter and made a couple of them for use in this environment. I tweaked the toroid coil spacing and parts positions until there was a cliff starting about 1790 and the transmit loss was minute across 1.8 to 30 mHz. I built in my own sharp-knee filter in the Omni 6+ and added a suck-out filter tuned to 1530. That fixed the TenTec. In more recent times, The problem became critical when I installed the HI-Z four element receiving array. Those Plus amps at the base of each element were sitting ducks for all that broadcast RF. The birdies were 20 over 9 and the sidebands covered 12 kHz! Lee, K7TJR at HI-Z made up four matched input traps for the amps and that brought down the problem to barely a nuisance. I won't miss any contacts because of it. We don't use any internal or external filters on the K3s and I'm surprised that you are having trouble with yours. There has to be an answer to explain that. The BCB RF is so strong here that our land line was always providing the programming from KGBT. BTW, it's a 24 hour talk radio station in spanish. We went to all cell fones a few years ago. CU on Topband, 73, Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: Modeling the proverbial vertical on a beach
I can only offer another anecdotal account to the subject. It started 44 years ago when I, Steve, K9CQV (K0SX), Ken, W0KUS, and Julius, K8HKB set up shop on San Andres Island and signed our calls portable HK0 for a week. With the help of Victor, HK0AI we had a location at the water's edge. We erected our 43 foot top loaded Minooka Special there with the aluminum dynamite blasting wire radials draped off into the water. We ran Drake twins and were amazed the reports from around the world and during the CQWW 160 CW contest. We even ran a number of phone patches on 160 for islanders from that location. Subsequently, I set up in a number of other locations on San Andres over the next 20 years using several HK0 calls. I never saw the same kind of success as that first trip until I located a palm tree supported Minooka Special at the Bahia Marina near San Luis town, again at the water's edge. It made a believer out of me. For a few of those years I operated at HK0BKX. Pacho's location was downtown on the north end of the island, blocks from the sea. It was like pulling teeth to get good reports on 160 from his place. Nevertheless, those are all fond memories. Pacho finally came to the states and operated in Rose Pine, Louisiana as W5/HK0BKX for a few years. He passed away about 15 years ago. He and I made a number of jaunts together to islands and Mainland Colombia. Ham Radio always played a part in those trips, but most of the wild stories I could tell about them had nothing to do radio or verticals on the beach. Don't ask. 73, Best DX, Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: Using 80m 1/4 vertical on 160
Mike, No need for traps and horizontal wires and such. Put a 160 resonator on top of that vertical. Use a low Q long skinny coil with a nice big capacity hat of 25 pico farads or so. It won't affect 80 meters and will only be down 2 db or less than a full 160 quarterwave, with a good ground system like you have. I can give you the specifics for the resonator if you wish. Refer to the QEX articles on Short Loaded Antennas in the Jan/Feb and Mar/ Apr issues for the figures. 73, Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: Insulator problems
When I lost my last set of monster buss bar ceramic insulators to breakage due to a broken guy line on the tower, I replaced them with artificial wood. I used 4 X 4's. It machines easily and works flawlessly wet or dry with full power even in very high voltage conditions. The material is actually made from recycled milk containers, so the factory told me. Anyone who wants a picture, I'll send it to you. 73, Barry W9UCW _ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
Re: Topband: W8ji ATR-10 design 160M?
I find that this simulator demonstrates what several of you are saying in a very comprehensive way. http://fermi.la.asu.edu/w9cf/tuner/tuner.html 73, Barry _ Topband Reflector
Re: Topband: G3FPQ SK
In a message dated 2/11/2013 11:04:05 A.M. Central Standard Time, topband-requ...@contesting.com writes: Re: Topband: G3FPQ SK Surely sorry to hear that. I like to test the sunSET opening here in the south tip of Texas. For a three year period I could count on David being on 1829 to exchange reports and verify conditions most days of the week. I've missed hearing him for some time now. I've always felt that we mourn for what WE have lost rather than celebrate a life that gave us so much. At my age, this happens with more frequency every day. Some of you may have known my old pal since grade school, Allan, W9YYG. I called him Moose. He passed away around Christmas time. We were best friends for 58 years. He was a kind soul and an avid operator. He read the TopBand reflector with irregularity. He would complain to me that They spend all their time arguing about such things as the size of wire to use for radials and how high you have to go to get field strength readings. Why don't they just get on and work 'em? That was Moose. He made me look at the other side of things. I miss him, too. Farewell David, farewell Moose. I hope there's no line noise at your new QTH. Barry, W9UCW _ Topband Reflector
Topband: Hi-Z vertical elements
Hi Gary, I went the PVC route first for my 4 element HI-Z. Same results as you but sooner. I ordered telescoping aluminum tubing and solved everything. I used 6 feet of 1 inch OD, 6 feet of .875 OD, 6 feet of .75 OD 3 feet of .625 OD for each vertical. The pieces are overlapped 4 inches and one stainless steel sheet metal screw holds each joint together. That makes a stiff vertical with low wind resistance no maintenance. The bottom piece of 1 OD fits nicely into 1 nominal PVC pipe which is then adapted up to 1.5 nominal PVC. That slips neatly into the 2 aluminum tubing that serves as both the antenna mount and the ground rod required by Hi-Z. . The tubing is available from DXE or Texas Towers among others. All four verticals cost me about $100. If anyone wants pictures, drop me a line. 73, Barry, W9UCW ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Topband: Antarctica
During the discussion of various 160 Antarctic operations did anyone mention AZ5ZA? In loading old logbooks in a new logging program I came across a couple contacts with them in late 1983 and January, 1984. I went digging and found the QSL. It came through LU2A. I think there may be a new holder of that call these days. 73, Barry ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Re: Topband: Small loop Performance (Clay Melhorn)
Hi Clay, Long time no see... When I lived in Minooka in the 60's 70's our old friend from Kankakee who was with the TV cable company fixed me up with a lot of scraps of half inch and one inch 75 ohm foam dialectric solid aluminum encased coax. Some of it had a direct burial covering. BTW, is he still in Alaska? Anyway, I made a number of shielded loops out of small pieces of the one inch stuff. I figured the smaller amount of capacitance-per-foot would greatly improve the Q over the RG58 loops that Doug DeMaw and I had worked on earlier. I wanted to see if I could get enough signal voltage that I wouldn't need an amplifier. Amplifiers had always reduced the signal to noise ratio in my experience. That was likely due to the unavailability of low noise devices as well as the lack of amp building prowess on my part. Doug was a lot better at that than me. Nevertheless, it worked out for me. I built a shielded loop about 10 feet in diameter. There was a one inch gap in the shield at the top. There was a similar gap at the bottom to expose the center conductor but the shields were joined there. The center conductor was cut at the bottom and a series variable cap inserted. That tuned the loop to 160. I had a lousy way of connecting it to the coax into the shack... just a series cap from one side of the tuning cap to the coax center conductor. The loop produced enough signal voltage that an amplifier wasn't needed. I compared the loop's performance when hung in a tree to having it mounted on the side of the two story garage with the shack upstairs. I couldn't detect any difference, Clay. Later I made a few three turn shielded loops of similar aluminum one inch coax and a diameter of about four feet. They used a single turn of bell wire for a coupling coil to the feedline. They were just as effective as the big single turn loop. During this period I had a 130 foot vertical, two half wave dipoles about 1000 feet apart, a 2,600 foot Beverage to the south, a 3000 foot Beverage to the west and a 550 foot two-wire reversible Beverage to the northeast or southwest. There were other antennas that could be used for 160 receive as well. The loops were occasionally the best antenna to hear a particular station... just as were all the rest. As I reported in the June '77 QST article on the subject, even the connection to the finger stop on the old dial telephone in the shack worked pretty well at times. I remember 160 contacts that could be best made listening on our tri-band beam. One other anecdote relates to your question, Clay. Stew, W1BB asked me to make one of the small three-turn shielded loops for use at his Tower station in downtown Winthrop. He said that the urban noise was beginning to cramp his style, even on his half wave 270 feet above the ocean below. I made the loop and got it to him. He called later to say that it seemed to be as noisy as the tower antenna and wasn't helping. In discussion I learned that he had hoisted it up the water tower to 100 feet. I told Stew that the feedline was acting like a vertical antenna and suggested he bring it down and mount it on the side of the little shed at the base of the water tower where he had his rig. He did that and reported that it was making contacts possible with stations he couldn't hear on the high dipole. There was no room whatsoever for other types of receiving antennas at that location. I know a couple guys who used those loops to good advantage with them located in their basements! Certainly the small loops are no panacea, Clay. But, as my Grandma used to say, Beggars can't be choosers. If space, restrictions and resources intervene, the small loop becomes an important option. I'll look for you on 160, Clay. Joyce sez Hello. 73, Barry, W9UCW ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Topband: I was just curious....
After reading all the comments about the end of the 160 season, I wondered how many DX contacts I make in the off season. I'm not very consistent in my operating habits and although I often check the band before sunrise, I'm not too good at staying up late looking for DX to the east. I'm a casual DXer and I have a lot of irons in the fire so I'll not break any records. Plus, knowing that so many stations in the northern hemisphere roll up the radials, so to speak, I tend to spend less operating time on 160 vs. other bands in those months. BTW, I live in the semi-tropics 25 miles inland from the noisy Gulf of Mexico. I have lots of excuses, don't I? I went back through logs since 2004 and made these findings. The numbers for March and September are almost the same as for the other in season months, so I threw those out. The numbers for April, May, June, July, and August are certainly less than September through March, and nearly equal for each of those five months over the years in question. Here's what I worked in those off season months on 160. VK,- 89 contacts JA---22 contacts XQ6---4 contacts LU-5 contacts FK8---2 contacts ZL-6 contacts DU9--2 contacts DL2 contacts 4O3--2 contacts KL7--2 Contacts KH6--3 contacts HK3 contacts FM5--2 contacts PY2 contacts CY9--2 contacts PJ4---2 contacts G--2 contacts CX5---2 contacts XE-5 contacts And one contact with each of the following: VK9, F5, SV3, KP2, IK1, N8S, AH2, 5W5, EI2, FW0, NP4, 5W0, LZ, LA, T77, HR, VI9, S51, E51, UT5, HA, C6, ET3, ZP6, So, for 8 years, that's 183 DX contacts or an average of about 24 per year and a bit under 5 per off season month. That's not bad for a not-ready-for-prime-time effort, but may not be exciting enough for many. I think that a more systematic approach to my operating habits would help my numbers. Then if folks around the globe did a more exuberant bit of spotting, it might get the attention of many who gave up in March. Of course the development of leather eardrums after 58 years on 160 is an asset I'm proud of. Best DX, 73, Barry ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Re: Topband: pace...@aol.com Subject: understanding 160 meter propagation
It sounds like classic spotlight propagation, Larry. Happens a lot on 160. I feel lucky to have experienced it several times over the last 58 years on topband. The most memorable one for me occurred about 8 years ago on a Saturday evening. I called CQDX about sunset and didn't expect much because the usual early spots by East Coasters were not showing up on the Summit. Several Russian and eastern European stations answered me. Reports were 579 to 599 both ways. It continued until sunrise in the British Isles as I worked my way across the continent. By that time reports were more like 449 to 569. I worked about 100 stations. I hardly heard any stations east of the Mississippi work any EU that night. On Sunday morning I had an eMail from John, ON4UN asking me what I was running last night because the only strong stations he was hearing was me and K9DX. Well, for me it was a spotlight propagation burst... for John, K9DX it was that fantastic layout he had. I was running an OMNI 6+ and a TenTec Hercules solid state amp at 500 watts into a 520' horizontal loop at 50'. Boy, was that fun! 73, Barry ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Re: Topband: Caged Inv-L - Pros and Cons ? (Dan Bookwalter)
During the 1980's we had a 120 foot, insulated base tower with an appropriate radial system. I wanted to improve it's performance and increase its bandwidth. I also wanted to add an 11 foot conical monopole to our collection of antennas. With the help of friends, we mounted the 14 to 60 MHz conical monopole on top of the tower. Then we caged the tower from top to bottom at 10 feet in diameter using #12 wire and 10' PVC pipes as spreaders at three levels. On 160 it was fed as a folded monopole with the tower grounded and it was below 1.5 to 1 SWR for most all of the band. On 80 where it was voltage fed as an insulated base, very fat half wave monopole, it was below 1.5 to 1 SWR for nearly the entire band. The cage doubled the bandwidths. IMHO, having also worked with using a cage as the gamma rod on grounded towers in several cases, I would say the positive effects are worth the trouble, Dan. It's hard to predict the results on your inverted L but I would urge you to try it. BTW, I had a remotely controlled tuner/matcher at the base of that big fat vertical. It allowed us to switch configurations, tweak the capacitance and inductance settings and either connect or disconnect the coax up to the conical monopole on top. I wish we still had that set up. 73, Barry, W9UCW ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Re: Topband: Effect of current max not at base of vertical
This may or may not be significant to the discussion. In the 1970's I was using a 120 foot insulated base vertical as my main transmit antenna. I had 12,000 feet of #12 copper radials from 90 to 200 feet in length buried about 3 inches in the ground surrounding the antenna. It was located near Minooka, Illinois in a wooded rural area. As an experiment, I asked several friends who were located from one to twelve miles away to record my signal strength at their location each day for one month at a specific power of 100 watts of carrier. Then I had my tower climbing buddy, Jack, W9YF (SK) put a resonator tuned to 1850 on top of the vertical. I had to modify the base matching system. It had been a shunt coil to ground. It now required a parallel resonant circuit from the base of the tower to ground with the coax from the rig tapped onto the coil. When my friends reported the signal strength they now recorded, it was from a half to a full S unit more than their original readings. Now that's certainly not very scientific, but their comments, assuming all groundwave readings, were sure interesting to me. 73, CU on TopBand, Barry, W9UCW ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
Topband: . Re: 160 metre vertical with 'top loading'
This subject comes up often. That should be no surprise. It's very important to those who need to load shortened monopoles, and there is a great deal of conflict in the available literature on the subject. The same seems to be true of conventional wisdom, as one might expect. Some of us have been working to sort it out for decades. The simplified explanation of RF current measurements made at various points along a quarter wave monopole fed against a ground system is the same for a sized or a loaded antenna. First let's consider a full-sized monopole, cut to resonate at a particular frequency. The monopole conductor will have an inherent inductance and capacitance and their opposing reactances will be equal... thus, resonance. A monopole is a standing wave antenna. Two RF currents exist when it is powered. One is the forward current and the other is the current reflected from the open end. These are AC currents at an RF frequency. The RF currents will be of opposite phase at the top of the monopole, thus the current will be near zero. Just the opposite will be true of the RF voltages, thus the voltage will be maximum at the top end. The RF current at any point along the monopole will be the vector sum of the two currents whose phase angles are changing in opposite directions. Thus, the sinusoidal curve depicting the antenna current. If the monopole is shortened and steps have been taken to resonate it, then some amount of lumped inductance and/or capacitance will be present to replace that lost in the shortening. The phase angles of both forward and reflected currents will change more rapidly in the lumped inductance and/or capacitance. Thus, currents measured above a loading coil will be notably less than below the coil. The same is true of a loading capacitance. The result of this phenomenon is most severely illustrated in very short monopoles fed against a poor ground plane, like a 75 meter mobile antenna. The far-field field-strength of a 9 foot mast with a coil and hat on top measures 16 db better than the same mast resonated with a base loading coil. The difference for a 160 vertical of, say, 60 feet over an extensive ground system is much less, but still very significant, like a 4 times power differential. It should be remembered that the electromagnetic/electrostatic field between the antenna mast and the ground plane is the part of the antenna system that loses energy that we call radio signal radiation. The more current in the mast, the stronger the radiating field, thus the more radiation. The current reduction in lumped inductance and capacitance loading explains why we have found no significant difference between High-Q vs. Low-Q loading coils, and very minute difference between coil vs. hat wire top loading. In fact, hat wires less than 90 degrees to the vertical mast cause notably less field strength depending on the angle and length. Obvious field canceling is the culprit. An ultimate example, somewhat related to umbrella wire loading and linear loading is the Meandered Line antennas published in the IEEE Transactions, December, 1998. It's performance can be best likened to a large, unshielded dummy load. I'm hoping to soon finish and publish the complete results of a dozen or so extensive measurement programs done over the last 40 years with the involvement of many cohorts. All of the work deals with loaded, shortened monopoles and related issues. 73, Best DX, Barry ___ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
