Posted: 12/19/2008 9:26:35 AM EDT
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I... am floored. With my mediocre dipole setup and ~30 watts on psk-31, I just worked 3B8GT from New Jersey. Damn near 10,000 miles to Mauritius, an island on the other side of Madagascar.
Wow. |
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Quoted:
20M. It is hopping today. +1 http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=10&f=22&t=615540&page=10#10548980 ar-jedi |
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I worked 3B8GT December 2nd on 20M with PSK. I was using my crappy 80-ish foot long random wire antenna at 12' above ground. I pushed my IC-7000 up to 100 watts, though. I gave him a 489 RSQ and he gave me a 599.
He must have a hell of a receiver! I should have a proper dipole up today (Alpha Delta DX-A) except the UPS man isn't likely to show up with it because of the snowstorm. 5 bucks says that "out for delivery" turns into "rescheduled." 
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Quoted:
I worked 3B8GT December 2nd on 20M with PSK. I was using my crappy 80-ish foot long random wire antenna at 12' above ground. I pushed my IC-7000 up to 100 watts, though. I gave him a 489 RSQ and he gave me a 599. He must have a hell of a receiver! I should have a proper dipole up today (Alpha Delta DX-A) except the UPS man isn't likely to show up with it because of the snowstorm. 5 bucks says that "out for delivery" turns into "rescheduled." That semi-long wire has a couple dB gain over a dipole. Sound like you are end feeding it at a voltage node which will reduce feed point losses. If you can get it up to 1/2 wavelength high at both ends, that will do you much better. 73, Don |
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I soooo screwed up. I should've read the PDF better before ordering it. 3 things I failed to catch: 1) the DX-A is not a dipole, it's a single wire that works against the tower's ground (not good when it's suspended from a 30' portable mast with a rope), 2) it really needs a beam overhead as a capacity hat and 3) it's a sloper that needs at least 110° separation between the legs and I don't have quite enough room for that. So although I made some contacts and got great reports on 40m, it pushed my AT-7000 to the limits and could only be tuned on part of the 80m and 40m bands.
So now I have two pieces of 59' 8-3/4" 14 ga. wire in an inverted V configuration with the legs about 80° apart and I'm very pleased so far. It will be a lot better when I get a 1:1 balun up and can start making it resonant, but HRO made a picking error and I got the wrong part.
Anybody want a brand new Alpha Delta DX-A that only spent 2 days up and was re-rolled with extreme anal-retentive neatness? 
[sorry for the thread hijack] |