I worked Rick at 03:21 from NC. He called me while I was running. His signal was much louder than many eastern US stations.
What is interesting is that here the big 3/8 wave L over FCP is mostly on the ground from late summer derecho winds and not repaired for medical reasons. The collection of disrepair includes my 8410 and its blown screen supply, so I was running the K3 barefoot. The antenna I did feed for the SP was the only possible cobble, out at the shed my end-fed 80m 1/2 wave L up 67 out 67. It works very well on 80. The 80 m L is fed with a "tank circuit" and with a very high feed Z any ground will do. The RF current is very low at the end of the half wave, and even the ugly effective RF resistance of the ground there is only a few percent of feed R. The ground is the shed's power ground rods, and #4 copper that bonds the shed ground to the house system at the RF entrance point on the house ground ring, plus whatever misc conductivity is added by the coax shield which is grounded to the same panels on either end as the #4. Removing any one conductor from the matching network ground makes no discernible difference in the feed Z at the network. But on 160... :>) It is all those things I tell people never to do -- a 15-20 ohm 1/4 wave L fed against a very lossy entirely miscellaneous ground. It was WAY off 50 ohms or anything remotely resembling an on-purpose 160m feed. But the K3 auto tuner matched it and the 70-ish feet of coax easily. The match was quite broad, wonder why... It became very clear working S&P perhaps half the stations I called either could not or could only barely hear me, and I usually lost to anyone else calling regardless. Running allowed me to at least work people that could copy me, if sometimes with multiple repeats. The depth of signal depravity could not be explained just by conditions, needing the antenna cobble to explain the rest. Which brings me back to N6RK. At 03:21Z I was running when he called me with a signal louder than a lot of eastern US signals, we finished the exchange in five or ten seconds, and he was gone. It's possible the signal was due to his sunset, but normally in the best of conditions I don't work the left coast from NC until three or four hours later, sunset or not. I will normally work even Arizona or Idaho hours earlier than CA or OR or WA. After the first half hour I had already resigned myself to working only the loudest low hanging fruit, and that was indeed true. Except for Rick, and K4XU in OR, not as loud as Rick, a few minutes later. All possible explanations will be read with interest. I never heard V55V. 73, Guy. On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Milt -- N5IA <[email protected]> wrote: > I see many posters complaining about bad condx. > I worked nearly every station I heard, including > many east coast stations, using only 100W to a > vertical. Big surprise was V55V with a very > solid signal 10,000 miles from the left coast. > That's a 48 point QSO. I have noticed on other > bands that there seems to be a pipeline to V5, > I guess I can add 160 meters to the list. > No blind calling here. I was able to raise him > with only a few calls. Condx seemed pretty good > here. I put up a low dipole for the contest, > but it didn't hear any better than the vertical > this time. It was also interesting that the > difference in S meter reading between antennas > varied from 5 to 20 dB, the vertical being stronger. > > Rick N6RK > _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
