John Laney:
Thank you again for the use of the W4AN callsign. I had a good time but only
made 98 contacts in 8 hours as a 1B station. I read the rules and discovered
that a 1 or two man "A-style" operation could be classified as a "B." Three
people or more is definately "A."
I ran the whole thing solo and had to hand log everything because computer in
the trailer was Win98SE, and didn't recognize my thumbdrive without drivers
(Which the administrator blocked me from adding). My laptop had gone down
earlier in the week with a power cord issue. I guess it wouldn't be a contest
without challenges...
I have input all of the calls to N1MM, but need to edit the times, bands, etc.
I'll try to get to it this week...
I did get one return - wish I had noted who it was - that said "glad to hear
Bill's call on the air." It gave me chill bumps. In retrospect I feel ashamed
that I didn't represent the call better than 98 contacts, but with the
challenges of hand logging, a mediocre radio and a marginal antenna, not to
mention exhaustion from my usual 18 hour a day week, it was all I could do.
Next year I want to be a part of a team!
Again, thank you for letting me use the W4AN call.
SECC'ers:
I have an antenna question: I bought a G5RV, and built an air core 1:1 balun
like the instruction said. They also said to isolate the shield of the coax
feedline from the antenna. I stripped back about three inches of jacket, cut
the braid and pulled it back so that only the center conductor of the PL-259
was connected to the SO-239 that the G5RV had soldered to the twin lead. I was
able to tune up, but couldn't make any contacts. I switched to another coax
feedline and coiled about 8 or 9 loops which I zip-tied "randomly" versus "nice
and neat." With this setup I started getting reponses to my calls.
Was it just by chance that I wasn't getting returns? Have you had any
experience with the concept of isolating the braid of the coax feeding a dipole
with twin lead? Since my tuner had two posts for connecting ladder line,
should I have just snipped the ladderline to SO-239 adapter off and gone
straight to the tuner?
Scott Straw, KB4KBS
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