Here's another ARRL CW score:
(Single operator, 40m only)
N6MU (at N6NB) 807 78 188,838
I'm posting this for John, N6MU, who operated at my station
in the Tehachapi Mountains (7,000' elevation).
Rig: TS-140 > pr. 3-500z (homebrew) > 2 ele. Cushcraft @ 72'
Several other postings here say that 40-meter conditions were
poor, especially into Europe from the Western U.S. Perhaps
I'm so new to 40-meter DXing with any kind of a beam antenna
(even a "shorty forty") that I may not know what good conditions
should sound like, because as I listened to what John was
working, I thought the signals from Europe sounded pretty good
on both long path and short path. However, Saturday night was
definitely not as good as Friday night, and Sunday's long path
opening was nothing like the one Saturday morning. On Sunday
we listened in frustration as W6GO ran long-path Europeans that
we could barely hear.
Later, I contacted W6GO and found out about his antennas (a
4-over-4 stack on 40, at 147/85 feet) and didn't feel so
bad about what we were hearing on the 40-2CD. Perhaps
the best thing about the 40-2CD is that this particular
one has been modified as per W6QHS' suggestions (in "The
Physical Design of Yagi Antennas")--and it has survived
a whole winter of the heavy icing and 80-100 mph winds
that are so commonplace at this QTH. (I put up an unmodified
40-2CD in summer, 1995, and it was destroyed during the very
first storm last winter).
As for John, he celebrated his 55th birthday by staying up
all night two nights in a row--to work 587 JAs out of 807
total QSOs on 40. He says it was a lot of fun, and he wants
to do it again--after I put up antennas comparable to those
at KC7EM, W6GO or W0UN. But I bought the property because
it's a good *VHF* location. I was thinking more of putting
up antennas like those at W5UN, not W0UN....
-Wayne, N6NB
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