CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW
Call: KU8E
Operator(s): KU8E
Station: KU8E
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Georgia
Operating Time (hrs): 19
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 768 State/Prov = 58 Countries = 31 Total Score = 182,984
Club: South East Contest Club
Comments:
K3/100 , KPA500 ~ 600 watts Inverted L with 6 elevated radials
My plan was to change out the antenna wire part of my Inverted L on Friday. It
had been up for awhile and the ends showed some corrosion. I screwed up when
pulling up the new wire when the nylon string broke when hoisting it. Tried
several times to shoot up a line in the trees in same spot with no luck and gave
up. So I went to plan B to try to use my 80 meter center fed zepp as a
"T" antenna which I heard is maybe better than an inverted L. I had to
move all my elevated radials to a new spot which took most of the afternoon. I
took this opportunity to raise the radials. The are each maybe 8 - 10 feet high
now.
My zepp is about 60 feet high and the ends slope down to maybe 10 feet off the
ground. Got out an old Dentron antenna tuner and shorted the open wire feed line
and fed it as a single wire. I then put a good ground strap from the ground
terminal of the tuner to the radial common point. I got it to tune OK but the
bandwidth wasn't very good. Maybe 5 kc from the center point. This wasn't going
to work for a contest so I just fed one side of the open wire feeder as an
Inverted L antenna. This gave me maybe about a 40kc bandwidth from the 1825
center frequency. This is important because the KPA500 amp trips with a SWR over
2:1. I used another antenna tuner inside to make the amp happy when I went high
or low in the band.
The conditions were pretty good to EU on Friday night but pretty much
non-existent on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I sure wish I could work 1/10 of
EU QSO's that the east coast works but it's not going to happen running 600
watts. Maybe some day I can afford a bigger amp and maybe that could be
possible.
DX worked : 9A, C6, CM, CT, CT3, DL, EA6, EA8, EI, F, FM, G, GM, GW, HA, IT9,
KH6, KP2, OH0, OK, OM, OZ, P4, PA, PJ2, S5, SM, VP9, XE, YV and ZF.
I probably heard about 20 other countries that were either calling someone else
or I called but they couldn't hear me. It was a bummer not getting thru to 5W1SA
on Saturday morning around my sunrise. He couldn't hear me when no one else was
calling and then someone must have spotted him and he had a big pileup :(
Worked all US/VE except NE, LB, NT, NU and YT. Heard a NE call N4WW late Sunday
morning around 0800z or so. Went a few kc below him and called CQ hoping he
would call me but no luck !
See everyone in the next one...
Jeff KU8E
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