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
