In my younger days I was anavid contester and especially welcomed the
challengeof 160 meters This was mostly the result of acquiringseveral
Collins 273W-1X antennas on a military surplus sale which proved to be
outstanding low band antennas after some minor modifications Over the
years I accumulated towers and antennas to put together a serious contest
station But my military assignments prevented anything permanentuntil my
retirement I found a nice little acreage in the Sacramento Mountains
ofsouth central New Mexico but it unfortunatelyhad a lot of RFI from a 1950s
era power grid Even so I put up some antennas and got on the air
After my brother K0HGW joined me in retirement we bought a 140 acre tract
of landin the Tularosa Basin that was 4 miles from the nearest power
lines The RFI noise level was essentially zero and we startedbuilding our
contest station Weinstalled one of the Collins antennas and a 3
wavelength beverage aimed at Europe Then I had a stroke and my brother was
killed in a car wreck and thatended the contest station antenna
building I partially recovered from the stroke but haveresigned myself to
just entering CW contests since I now have a speechimpediment from the
stroke In fact my neurologist tells me that this is very good for my
recovery from the stroke Ispend most of my time on 160 with one of the
Collins antennas from my QTH in the mountains Ihave been trying to
get around the noise problems with a lot of cooperation from the
electriccooperative and various types of receiving arrays but it still gets
up over S9a lot of the time OK - so the reason for this
narrative is that I haveseveral towers and antennas that would makea pretty
respectable contest station and I am willing to donate them to any
groupthat will come get them and put them touse This includes two of the
Collins antennas that are worth $30,000 each Ifanyone is interested
they can contactme at n7df@yahoo.com for details
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