These recordings are an impressive demonstration of the benefit of Many years ago, Clarke Greene, K1JX, casually mentioned that he had determined adding 1dB to your signal strength would result in a
Thanks for that reminder Doug. That was a good project and opportunity. I was "all in" both years. And the only difference to any of the antennas was changes to some localized feedlines and matching
I have no data that would support the 6%/dB rule of thumb, but I absolutely agree with the slides in your presentation, Doug. For many years I was constrained to simple vertical antennas due to neigh
What a great presentation and how it relates to contest scores. It starts to get very expensive when you are squeezing that last dB out of your station either though commercial sized Heliax or by add
On 8/22/2019 11:55 AM, john@kk9a.com wrote: Many years ago, Clarke Greene, K1JX, casually mentioned that he had determined adding 1dB to your signal strength would result in a 6% increase in your con
Since in SS, you can only work once in the contest and we all know how ridiculously slow Sunday afternoon gets for the top scorers, it would seem that the Low Power stations can catch up somewhat ove
Terrific presentation, Doug. Wish I'd seen something like this when I got serious about contesting 20 years ago! A few comments: - 6% per dB is a lot! That would compensate for my UBN losses in most
I really enjoyed the powerpoint presentation as well. In terms of return on investment, what would be the best sized antenna to get, at what height, and which power level linear would be best? I mean
The answer is 42. You just need to ask the right question. (arcane reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"). This is really too broad a question to answer easily. But maybe I can help a bit fo
The links I posted yesterday in this thread address the antenna issues. k9yc.com/publish.htm There are both pdf text files and slides for talks I've done on the topic. There's loss data for coax, har
As you climb the cost curve, the marginal benefit depends a lot on operator skill, who youre up against, how you and your competition perform during the contest and how many hours you can stay in the
This is all relative. Depends on you, your pocketbook, your qth, your terrain, your neighbors, your town rules and regulations, time of the sunspot cycle and so many other factors. Not to mention whe
John, From my perspective, the answer to that is "when you can hold a run frequency and when you are usually first or second call on S & P". Until then, you haven't hit diminishing returns. More nume
A comment about amps: Doug is right on the 10:1 bang for the buck ratio, but there are other advantages to state-of-the-art autotune amps. For example, you dont have to take the time to retune when c
I am getting one of the new amps (KPA1500) and one major factor is that I can't easily pick up and move the old Alpha amps that I have been using.?? I need to have them repaired occasionally (great j