I fantasized when running SSB as a DXpeditioner, I should have my
recorded F10 message be the I95 song and dedicate it over the air to the
worst lid. It might help discipline the pileup ;) .
beware xx content
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=i+95+song+original&docid=608025321346304601&mid=89C9EE75E5E280C5AD2A89C9EE75E5E280C5AD2A&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Grant KZ1W
On 4/30/2020 12:46, Dave Sublette wrote:
There is no question that a well matched, efficient antenna, mounted in the
clear is the best. But my "pile-up anxiety" is practically non-existent.
I know what a pile-up sounds like from a DX station's point of reception.
For five and a half years I sat in front of a radio for 20 hours a week,
running the pileups from Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. From
December,1983 until April,1989, I was KX6DS. I also operated as KC6TO from
Ponape (Pohnpei) in what was then the Eastern Caroline Islands, now
Federated States Of Micronesia. I made 83,000 QSOs and have more than
40,000 QSLs on the shelf in one of my closets to show for it.
One night on 20 meters there was propagation only between me and San Diego,
California. I had no pileups and a nice ragchew developed with me and three
San Diego stations. they were all running 1500 watts with tribanders at 70
feet and lived within two or three miles of each other. So I asked them to
start talking in turn, one after another, and to keep it up for several
minutes. While they were talking I watched the signal strength of each.
One of them would be 20 dB stronger on any given round. The next sentence,
another of them would be 20 dB stronger. It was if a
propagation "spotlight" was moving around the sky, just like the ones we
used to see from the county fair. And when the spotlight shined on one of
the stations, it was his turn to work me.
My conclusion is that if you have a decent setup and use reasonable
operating technique, you are pretty much assured of a QSO. Keep in mind
that the DX station probably does not hear many of the callers you do. I
could put stations in the log at a rate of three or four a minute as long
as good operating technique was maintained. I also found that if I remained
calm and seemed to be reasonably efficient, the pileup behaved very
reasonably. I never criticized anyone on the air, even if I thought they
needed a refresher in technique or simple manners. I did lose it one
time. There was one fellow, whose call mercifully escapes me, who
persisted in sending his call right on top of every station I was trying to
work for several minutes. I tried to ignore him, but he was not having
it. I finally paused and called his callsign and asked, Are you a natural
born lid or did you take lessons?" He never called again and his call
didn't appear in my log. (All in CW)
So that's why I don't worry about a dB.
73,
Dave, K4TO
ps -- Yes I still have the logs -- all 18 of them, spiral bound. And I
still get requests for QSLs. If you are in the log, you can get a card.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 3:13 PM <n6sj@earthlink.net> wrote:
Great discussion!
But personally, I think on CW your timing (call early, call late), keying
speed (call faster, call slower), and placement of your signal in the
receiver's passband (call high, call low) will all have a much bigger
effect
on being noticed and answered than a 1dB increase in RF signal power.
On SSB your timing, mic equalization, enunciation, and inherent voice
timbre
will similarly swamp a 1dB power increase.
73,
Steve
N6SJ
-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk <towertalk-bounces@contesting.com> On Behalf Of
dj7ww@t-online.de
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 8:47 AM
To: 'Brian Beezley' <k6sti@att.net>; towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 40m 4el KLM - replacing linear loading with coils
Physical bending of the tubing is not necessary.
By using mounting plates with isolating Stauff clamps at the needed angle
as
element holders straight elements can be used.
73
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of
Brian
Beezley
Sent: Mittwoch, 29. April 2020 16:17
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 40m 4el KLM - replacing linear loading with coils
The forward gain difference between my single-coil and two-coil models is
0.02 dB. This is with no coil losses, whose difference might easily
overwhelm a small directivity difference. But I restored the coil losses
and
got the same result.
Input resistance is in the mid-20s in ohms for the single coil model and in
the mid-40s for two coils. I had expected band-edge reactances to be about
the same for both models and thus SWR to significantly increase for the
single-coil model. Instead, the reactances are similar to the input
resistances, with only a small difference in band-edge SWR for the two
designs when each is matched at band center.
I neglected to say that the AWG 5 copper-clad aluminum wire weighs 37.42
lbs/1000' while pure copper is 100.2 lbs/1000'. 3/16" OD refrigeration
service soft copper (0.1875" instead of 0.1815") with a 0.03" wall weighs
57.5 lbs/1000'. 1/8" OD is 34.7 lbs/1000'. An optimized 7.7 uH coil using
1/8" copper is 5.6" by 3.3" with a Q of 985. (As wire diameter decreases,
the proximity effect that limits coil Q decreases, which enables coils that
are smaller, lighter, and cheaper.)
This describes an interesting trick for 40m Yagis:
http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/owa.htm
I had toyed with the idea of writing a little utility that generates wire
segments for an element bent using dacron lines that run from somewhere
near
the half-element midpoints back to the boom. This would eliminate the need
for a custom bent-element mount. You could even run the lines between
driven
element and reflector to bend both, which may improve gain even more. To do
this right you need the taper schedule and tubing bending parameters. Even
better would be to include the dacron line tension in the optimization
parameters and then optimize everything simultaneously. I'll leave this for
someone else.
If you think the 0.5 to 1 dB a conventional OWA costs in forward gain is
inconsequential, check this out:
http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/pileup.htm
The analysis isn't definitive. But the next time it takes forever to bust a
pileup with your OWA, you may not be able to get the probability curves out
of your head.
COIL 3.90 is here:
http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/coil.zip
Brian
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