Finally after acres of radials and eleven receiving antenna positions, I feel
better about living on the west coast for 160.. You guys that can work europe
with your dipoles at 30 feet from the East coast have always made me feel
jealous.. I worked my first EU station a while back during the very rare
auroral cap low. For you on the East coast that are still looking for your
first Ja contact I feel bad. We at K7TJR (K7ZUM and myself) made 117 JA
contacts during the contest. We had no idea there were that many JA stations on
160. With 8 elements in one unique design RX antenna I can truly say it is ALL
about phasing and or lack of for performance on 160. Just when you think your
antenna array may be phased correctly, it may not be. Thanks to all for helping
us to break 1000 contacts from the west coast.. Highlight was VR2BG sending and
sending until the light finally went on in my head to listen in the right
direction for his signal. Thanks Brett.. Also apologies to the UA boys as a bad
street light in that direction limited our signal to noise to the north.. We
knew you were there just could not make the exchange. As for the caribeans and
the D4B station in that direction from here, we could only work a few.. It is
nearly impossible to hear and or work most of these stations in the contest
because of the wall of signals across the US calling and calling. D4B was loud
as well as the PJ2, NP4, and more. We did not work the D4B station because of a
US station CQing right on top of him in the window. Please read the rules
before the contest guys?? VK and ZL signals were light with only a few in the
log. Also to you boys with the ft1000's, just because you can now slide right
up to within 200 Hz of a clean strong signal with your new whiz bang filters
and start cqing, It does not mean that your clicking side bands do not extend
right over into the adjacent stations pasband. It is a lot better now but
hopefully we can keep cleaning these rigs up. Thanks for all the fun guys.
Lee K7TJR Oregon
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