Bleh. I was hoping for better, but...
for WQ5L (Alabama):
Band QSOs Mults
----------------
10m 33 14
15m 10 7
20m 95 39
40m 98 34
80m 32 17
160m 1 1
Total 269 x 112 == 30,128
It looked so promising right at the start -- nice 10m sporadic E opening
centered on 2 and 3 land. I'm thinking, "yeah! I can break 400 Qs at
this rate!". Hah. Moved down to 15m after a while and no one's home.
Got distracted helping a guy get his BBS running after that.
Came back around 2200Z, battle plan says be on 20m at this time.
Europe was LOUD, but no short skip at all! All I hear is west coast.
40m was ok propagation wise, but there just weren't many folks on.
Calling CQ wasn't doing much so I multiplier hunted, remembering to
turn AF gain down when going by 7205 (how many megawatts is Radio Moscow
using on that channel anyway?)
20m came alive around 0200Z, oddly enough. Short skip into 8/9 land was
loud, very short skip to FL and Carolinas, and the 6s and 7s were still
there. Nice spread of mults.
As for 80m, I'm just too weak there. Congrats to the 32 who struggled
to pull me out of the QRN, I know it wasn't easy. And also the one who
erroneously decided I was a dupe, costing me a multiplier. :-(
States missed entirely: Maine, Tennessee (!!!), Mississippi, Oklahoma,
Hawaii, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota. And only 2 QSOs with Georgia --
under 1% of total -- very unusual.
73
-- ray WQ5L rrrocker@ingr.com
>From Steve Harrison <sharriso@sysplan.com> Wed Aug 24 20:55:00 1994
From: Steve Harrison <sharriso@sysplan.com> (Steve Harrison)
Subject: Radials and Aluminum Wire
Message-ID: <Pine.3.87.9408241500.B15882-0100000@eagle>
A year ago, I went on a business trip to the big island of KH6 where we
spent 3 week installing and operating a 75 kW, 49 MHz radar. The antennas were
multielement phased dipoles with a steerable main lobe generally 75 degrees
off the horizon; 18 gauge aluminum wire was used as a ground plane for
the array.
Meanwhile, back at the rented beach house where I had my TS120S, I
erected a 2 element 7 MHz fixed quad in a pair of tall palm trees using
the aluminum wire, and oriented toward the mainland. Imagine my surprise
and delight to find the SWR to be really nice and low, like less than
1.2:1 at my design frequency of 7025 kHz! Wow! No tuning of the antenna
is required! Let's get on the AIR!!!
Two days later, I sadly concluded, after observing that the bandwidth of
the quad was greater than 500 kHz before the SWR exceeded 1.5:1, that the
aluminum wire was doing a better job of heating the local environment
than exciting the ionosphere. I also had my old Master Mobile whips, and
erected one on the balcony; instantaneous comparisions between the quad
and vertical whip showed better than several S-units improvement of
received signal strength on the mobile antenna, no matter where the signal
originated! Dragged out the ohmmeter and measured a couple of ohms. Lowered
the driven element, shorted the feedpoint and measured nearly zero ohms.
Raised the antenna again after using nuts and screws to assure tight connections
between the coax and wire, and still measured several ohms!
Moral: don't expect aluminum wire to have low RF resistance, especially
for long elements!
73, Steve KO0U/4
P.S. By the way, there were actually four phased arrays, each fed by
individual transmitters. The transmitters were all Class C with 8877s in
the final, and were originally designed (and I think built) by John
Brosnahan, our own W0UN. Talk about a small world! Each transmitter was
capable of over 75 kW pulsed output, but generally we ran them at only 50
kW each.
>From Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton@engineer.clemsonsc.NCR.COM Wed Aug 24 20:55:00
>1994
From: Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton@engineer.clemsonsc.NCR.COM (Skelton, Tom)
Subject: FW: Lightning
Message-ID: <2E5BA791@admin.ClemsonSC.NCR.COM>
>>I am in the throes of recovering from my first lightning hit, and I am
still sensitive to the hassles. I wanted to go ahead and post this to
everyone NOW because summer lightning/thunderstorms here aren't
nearly over.
Questions for the multitude -
Do you use Polyphaser stuff? If so, how do you like it?
>>A local followed Polyphaser's exact plan, never unplugs his
equipment during lightning storms, and swears by it.
If not, why not? What do you use?
>>I was stupid. I had a bare minimum in station grounding and tower
ground. This mistake cost me far more than buying some polyphaser
products and following their instructions.
If you use the same basic approach, but scaled back, in what respects do
you feel it's OK to do so?
>>IMHO, if you have a tower you follow all the ideas you presented
in your original post. Otherwise, you pay the piper when Mother
Nature QSO's your antenna or power system.
Has your installation taken a direct hit? Induced voltage hit? Effects?
>>I had a secondary hit through came through the power system.
At the time, all coax cables were disconnected from the HF system.
Unfortunately, I still had the packetcluster 2m stuff going.
The packet radio, computer, tnc, power supplies, rotors, keyers,
hf transceiver -- everything got zinged to some degree.
I'll be glad to take responses by E-mail and then summarize for the
reflector if there is sufficient interest.
>>Please post the other input if you get any. I am so fed up with
all the hassle (repairs, insurance claims, etc.) I would like to
forewarn anyone that lightning protection is a serious design
element in your antenna system. Pay now (lightning protection)
or pay later (lightning damage).
73, Pete
N4ZR@netcom.com
>>73, Tom WB4iUX (Tom.Skelton@ClemsonSC.NCR.COM)
>From tree@cmicro.com (Larry Tyree) Wed Aug 24 22:28:17 1994
From: tree@cmicro.com (Larry Tyree) (Larry Tyree)
Subject: NCJ Sprint dates
Message-ID: <9408242128.AA22889@cmicro.com>
There seems to be a few people confused on when the NCJ Sprints will be
held next month. The CW weekend is on Sunday, Sept 10th UTC time (Saturday
local time) and the SSB weekend is on Sunday, Sept 17th UTC time (Saturday
local time).
You can register your CW teams with me over internet: tree@cmicro.com
(note that the NCJ had the wrong address for me in the masthead).
You can register your SSB teams with Rick at his address
aoniswan@ecuvm.cis.ecu.edu
You can also send your logs to these addresses after the contest.
There hasn't been much objection to the proposal of swapping the CW and
SSB weekends in February, so I would expect the SSB sprint to be the
first weekend of February (the 4th) and the CW weekend the following
weekend.
If you need a complete copy of the rules, send rick or myself a message.
Tree N6TR
tree@cmicro.com
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