I didn't have much time, but I did manage to sneek out for a short time tonight backpacking the Palstar R-30 to a local park and laying out a beverage on ground (BOG) antenna. This time I brought my MFJ-1026 but had left the coax jumper at home ( Doh ! ), and then while stringing out the wire, my speaker wire pigtail broke 100 ft from the end. Not knowing initially where it had broken, I stopped pulling. so that left me with 100 ft of wire still on the spool, thus I only used 500 ft tonight. This is layed in a field of tall grass.
I've got the MFJ-1026 and Palstar R-30 individually wrapped in bubble wrap, then taped together. That fits nicely in the bottom of my normal sized backpack. The plan (when I get the bugs worked out) is to only have to unzip the top of the pack, hook up the wire, turn on the radio, and be DXing. Minimal setup, minimal take down. I've got both the MFJ and Palstar running off the same external 12v rechargable battery, and when I get a simple 12v to 9v converter built, I'll be running my tape recorder off that too. My antenna is a 500 ft spool of stranded 14g wire with 200 ft of speaker wire pigtailed on the end of that (stretches too easily though, and breaks! ). I put the spool on a "T" made from water pipe that makes up my cable winder. I leave a 10 inch piece sticking out the ground so all I have to do is mount the "T" on that, slide the spool on, place a cap to hold on the spool, and walk it out. Winding it up is a snap using a wooden handle with a sawed off screw on the end that I stick in one of the holes on the spool. I can easily wind up the antenna at 100 ft per minute. The wire gets hidden in the woods (pretty heavy to carry each time), the pipe is dissasembled and goes in the pack. Only a short pipe sticking out of the ground stays at the DX site. Anyway, either the band was flat today, or I just got out there too early (7pm). No Mexican or Cubans heard at all, although as I was driving home, XEX was audible on 730khz using the car radio. First impressions with this antenna can be deceiving. At home, with omni directional antennas, the band is alive with interferring stations, channels roaring with a jumble of stations comming in from everywhere. I don't hear that with the BOG. It's deceiving because as you tune across the band, stations that normally are very loud, are quite weak, then suddenly BOOM, you tune across a loud station, but it's not a powerhouse KDKA, or WSM, it's WLOC Monfordville, KY, or WDHP Frederiksted, US Virgin Islands -this antenna is very directional ! Especially at the top end of the band. So here's tonight's log: Palstar R-30, 500ft BOG aimed south east. 1150khz WLOC Monfordville, KY 10.17.03 1920cdt VG with quick ident. JW-WI 1160khz WAMB Donelson, TN 10.17.03 1915cdt VG with Lions HSFB. JW-WI 1180khz WVLZ Knowxville, TN 10/17.03 1910cdt VG with Bulldogs HSFB. JW-WI 1650khz KDNZ Cedar Falls, IA 10.17.03 1900cdt VG with local news and wx. JW-WI 1670khz WRNC Warner Robbins, GA 10.17.03 1905 cdt E all alone with gospel prog. JW-WI I possibly heard PJB Bonaire on 800khz tonight with a long monolog in spanish, sounded like religious content. I'll be trying again the next few nights, so we'll see what conditions bring ! 73, John Wilke WB9UAI Milwaukee, WI ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2004 is coming out! Preorder yours now! Only $20.97 through us. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823059685/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt