The K7RAT station was manned by W7NX, K7EW and K7NT this weekend.
Since I was unable to operate - I had to find a different outlet
for my enthusiasm. This took the form of putting up a beverage in
the middle of the night with the temperature at 32 degrees (that's
zero C for you international folks).
First, I had to get permission from the YF to pen her horses up so I
could expect a wire 4 feet off the ground to survive. I promised the
antenna would be down before she got up on Sunday morning.
I took the lantern out and got all the neighbor's dogs barking stringing
a 700 foot wire. I made a 9:1 transformmer by using three wires - twisted
by using a hand drill (N6AA taught me that) and winding around some toroid
that I had laying around. You can easily test them by putting something
around 450 Ohms on the output and checking the SWR with your SWR meter.
I had a 1.2:1 SWR during this test. It was flat up over 10 MHz.
I used a couple of random pieces of aluminum tubing for the ground
connections - shoved into the ground a foot or two. The antenna was
about 10 feet off the ground for 1/3rd of its length, and about 3 or 4
feet for the rest of it. I terminated it with a 450 Ohm resistor (a
300 Ohm 3W in series with a 150 Ohm 3W).
Before getting the beverage up - we were mostly transmitting with the
vertical and listening with a high dipole. The first station we worked
after installing the beverage couldn't be heard on the beverage - which
was a rather disappointing moment. However, through the rest of the
evening - and the next - the beverage proved to be the better antenna
a significant percentage of the time.
This is my first personal experience with a beverage and I am pleased
with the results. I think I will work on figuring out how to install
one more permanently. Until then, I will probably ask the YF if I
can string this one back up for the Stew Perry (coming in just two weeks).
73 Tree N6TR
n6tr@contesting.com
PS: We had just under 600 QSOs with a pretty disappointing JA turnout.
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