[3830] ARRL 160 WE9V Single Op LP

Milt, N5IA n5ia at zia-connection.com
Thu Dec 10 06:38:39 PST 2009


> Which leads me to the contest....heard LOTS of EU calling
> CQ in/near the DX window, some even S9 on the beverage(!!)
> but had great difficulty in working them, if I worked them
> at all.  Some stations I worked in one call.  Others I
> called and called on and off for hours and never made it.
> This is something I'm not used to.  From home, I have a
> RX issue (S9 noise) and usually run HP.  If I can hear
> them, I can easily work them.  From this quiet location
> and running LP, I could easily hear them, but not work
> them.  That's definitely frustrating.  I'd rather work
> everyone I can hear, instead of hearing more stations
> but I can't work them.  At home I have a shunt fed 115'
> tower plus yagis for cap loading, 100 radials and 7
> ground rods.  This location, I had an inverted L (up 85')
> with one ground rod and 16 radials.  Slight difference,
> but not a "bad" antenna/ground.


Chad,

You reversed the situation.  At your home location you undoubtably had many 
callers which you never heard (like the EUs not responding to your calls 
this year).  They were running HP with RX limited situations like you do at 
home.

The order of magnitude of change is probably ~30 dB, or even more depending 
on the difference of the RX at the two locations.  You gave up 12 dB right 
off the bat with the TX differential.

The end result is tremendous, and what you experienced replicates what we 
experience all the time from the deep Southwest.  In this contest the most 
spectacular example was me calling one certain OM station for a full ten 
minutes.  During that time he worked 3 stations on the USA east coast and 
the rest of the time he just CQed in my face.  His signal did have QSB but 
most of the time the signal was solid Q5.

I have been told by those who have personal on site experience that much of 
the eastern EU area has power line interference problems.  This expereince 
is not isolated as it is regular, contest to contest from our part of the 
country.

Mis dos centavos.

Milt, N5IA 



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