David, some stats from Clublog below: In 2013, XR0ZR made a major 160M effort, in South American summer: 160: 1050 Q's 80: 2374 Q's 40: 4579 Q's I think it's unreasonable to expect that every single
This recording from a peak that lasted about 5 minutes before my sunrise: http://n3qe.org/vi9ni-160m.wav I had been listening for an hour before and heard just glimmers before the nice peak. Tim N3QE
Mike, just like you plan to do, I use a doublet on 80 and up, and tie the feed line together at the base and feed it against ground as a Marconi T on 160M. I use Deltrol 900-series open frame 30A rel
I don't own a farm, just an oddly shaped suburban lot, and I'd like to assure you that I run over and chop up more radials than you ever will. Most of my radials also run over driveway etc and the mo
1838-1841 is the FT8 no-mans land anyway so not useful for CW anymore. Tim N3QE _________________ Searchable Archives: http://www.contesting.com/_topband - Topband Reflector
The Ameritron RCS-4 uses three .01uF 1kV disc capacitors in parallel in this position. I don't think 4 ohms of XC is a biggie in the antenna system SWR, but increased current handling capability of p
Terry, I strongly encourage you to put up the K9AY. By no numerical measure is it the best. But its easy to put up and Compared to all the others, it is relatively insensitive to other objects around
We went thorugh a similar discussion here a year ago about the "cooked" S/N statistics. Or at least they are cooked in a way that no CW operator would cook them, by considering a bandwidth 50 times w
John, your 80M dipole with 110 foot vertical feedline fed as a top-loaded vertical on 160M is a wonderful antenna. If you are unhappy with its receive performance,the solution is to add a receive ant
Frank, Rick, I found my ".wav" files doing similar to what AB7E does. Except that his has MP3 raspy artifacts all over the place and mine doesn't. Take a listen to his and mine AB7E MP3: http://www.a
Pete, broadly in matching theory, a series-capacitor match can often be replaced with a series L and shunt C to ground. Often the topology will be chosen on component value reasonableness and conveni
There's a "max distance in pure daylight" Stew Perry award at least some years? At start of a 160M contest (5PM local time, shortly before my sunset) I have no problem making QSO's into Indiana and I
Some QSB but easy copy much of the time, working simplex on 160M CW. Grayline says this was 20 minutes before his sunrise. Audio here: http://n3qe.org/oy1r.wav Tim N3QE _________________ Searchable A
Some good news/bad news intermingled below :-) At my house we had two modern air handlers and heat pumps put in about 5 years ago. They were high-efficiency rated and had Genteq ECM motors. Note that
The CQ Magazine DX Marathon judge seems to have some superb smarts as to what validates a plausible contact. I know for sure he caught it when due to a typo of mine, I busted a callsign from a perfec
Sometimes EU participation in the Big Stew is weak. But there was very noticeable EU participation in this past weekend's Pre-Stew. I was only on briefly but I had a blast! Tim N3QE _________________
Large swaths of both the contesting and DXing communities are not hooked up for RBN skimmer spots. No more than a few percent of supposedly active cluster nodes even carry skimmer spots. As a result
Continuing from N4ZRs relay thread and Robs observation: For low impedance (50 ohm ballpark) side switching, I went to Struthers Dunn (now P&B) DPDT T92 relays with paralleled 30A contacts. I got a b
7X4AN was on 80M earlier in the night with S7 signals and I worked him with 100W. 7X7X had a superior signal - sounded like any local - and I also worked him with 100W. I am sure you will get through
Larry, I understand most modern doorknobs (e.g. HEC's) at or below 170pF are NPO. I think 3 170pF's in parallel may work if you truly need NPO. Matching network or blocking capacitor? Tim N3QE ______