Hi Bill, As Wes already mentioned, your SWR bandwidth is suspicious as is your minimum SWR. Nevertheless your signal this morning was pretty much on par with the strongest signals I have ever heard from KH6 land on 160 meters.
When I worked you this morning signals were not that great, but after our QSO your signal really came up. Your signal came up so much that I decided to record one of your CQs at around 0608 UTC when you were running around 10 dB over my noise floor, and I even saw your signal increase to around 15 dB over my noise floor for a while a bit later on. Your RX capabilities appeared to be pretty good too since you copied my measly 100 watts before signals really came up. I just uploaded a recording of your CQ when you were running around 10 dB over my noise floor, and here is the youtube link to the recording http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF10bDQFowU&feature=youtu.be 73, Don (wd8dsb) On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 4:28 AM, cqtestk4xs--- via Topband < topband@contesting.com> wrote: > > First, I want to say thank you to all who responded to my post about a top > loaded vertical for 160. > > The antenna I wound up with was quite different than the one I proposed. > Basically, it is about 132 feet of wire. The top "bent" part (65 feet) is > carried by a piece of thin Phillystran stretched out from the 84 foot > level on my tower out to around 350 feet to a "borrowed" neighbors > property. Luckily the property also rises in slope about 25 feet, giving > me a little extra height. The remaining 67 feet is dropped straight down > to the ground. I currently have around 40 radials laying on the ground, > not buried yet. Another 20 or so to come. Some of the radials from the 160 > vertical overlap the ones from my 4 square for 80 > > > The antenna is directly fed with 50 ohm cable and the SWR is 1:1 at 1825 > and is less than 1.3:1 across 1800-1900 kHz. It looks into the tower in > the direction of North America. > > I gave the antenna its first workout tonight and it is a winner. Worked > all over the US and had about ten EU call in. Copy was tough on this end > as QRN was quite bad on the shared apex rx antenna. > > Thanks again to all who helped me find a solution to my 160 antenna. > > Bill KH7XS/K4XS > _________________ > Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband > _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband