Hi Anton Jo used both horizontally and vertically polarised antennas at different times and I think you will find his experiences very interesting. His blog is written in Indonesian but can be easily
Gday As a committed (yeah, thats probably the right word - complete with white jacket that laces up at the back) topbander since 1970, Ive never been so intrigued and disturbed by anything on the ban
Gday Thanks very much to all those who contributed to the thread following my FT8 - the end of 160m old school DXing? post. Here is a summary of what appeared in my In Box. First, special thanks to C
Hi Vince Definitely not - I was being dead serious (but, as I'm Australian, interspersing what I said with attempts at humour). The part of the post I made from which you made the extract is about th
Gday Sad to hear from Jim K1PX that Bob W3GH has gone SK. He was a superb 160m op and used to work him regularly from the mid-1990s onwards. There are some CW ops that can just slip their call into a
Gday It has been a pretty poor season here so far, with conditions after VK6 sunset into North America at/before sunrise well down on last year. However, this morning the band opened well into easter
Hi Iain I am one of the lucky VKs who have worked V31 Belize on 160m V31YN on 03/01/2005 at 1217Z (very near his sunrise I think). The operator was Gerd, DJ4KW and my recollection he was running 100W
Gday Thanks to Carl K9LA for his excellent insights as always in how 160m prop works. Having been active on 160m from Western Australia for some 23 years, once thing Ive learnt is that in south-weste
Hi Jim The omission of the words inverted vee in front of dipole for Tom W8JIs antenna up 300 feet high was a slip of the keyboard at my end! I used to work Tom regularly back when he had the antenna
Gday There have been some great tributes on the reflector to Jack Leahy VE1ZZ really enjoyed them all and a special thanks to Jeff VY2ZM for his extensive one, especially the part from Carl Leahy. Of
Gday After retiring earlier this year, Ive managed to retrain (at least temporarily) my body to get up at 5am again for the pre-sunrise period here during November. When not chasing DX to boost my DX
Hi Mark Great to hear from you - will definitely be looking for you. This week I've been chasing Z23MD (without luck so far), but done the odd CQ on 1831.5 after SR - my SR is currently about 2120Z..
G'day With the exception of last Sunday I've been on 160m for east coast NA sunset from 7/11/18 until 12/11/18 to try to give out some long path contacts with USA/VE. Although there has been some spo
Gday Although there was no LP prop into NA today, I had the best European propagation since 1 November, working 12 Europeans. The prop was very much spotlight, favouring Italy, Serbia, Hungary and Gr
G'day Dave (and all) Your observation that the low sunspot numbers does not bring good conditions to 160m definitely holds for VK6. Mike VK6HD told me he had observed this over several sunspot cycles
Gday One way to get around the problem Frank W3LPL outlines below is to have one general/TX 160m antenna that you switch between vertical and horizontal polarisation. If you can get up an inverted-V
Hi JC In my experience, here in the southern hemisphere and relatively close to the equator, I wish that "Vertical TX antenna is the only way to work DX on topband!" Unfortunately vertical antennas m
Hi Frank (and Rick) Somewhere I have a map of the lines of geomagnetic latitude superimposed on a Mercator projection of the world, but I cant find it right now. Unlike the ruler-straight lines of co
Hi Jerry Thanks so much for posting that excellent article I had forgotten about it! For those who want to understand more about geomagnetic lat/long and gyrofrequency effects on 160m, it is just abo
Hi Frank (and Rick) Somewhere I have a map of the lines of geomagnetic latitude superimposed on a Mercator projection of the world, but I cant find it right now. Unlike the ruler-straight lines of co