The black hole moves south (NAQP)

[Ray Rocker]

Bleh. I was hoping for better, but...

for WQ5L (Alabama):

Band  QSOs Mults
----------------
10m    33    14
15m    10     7
20m    95    39
40m    98    34
80m    32    17
160m    1     1
Total 269 x 112  == 30,128

It looked so promising right at the start -- nice 10m sporadic E opening 
centered on 2 and 3 land. I'm thinking, "yeah! I can break 400 Qs at 
this rate!". Hah. Moved down to 15m after a while and no one's home. 

Got distracted helping a guy get his BBS running after that.
Came back around 2200Z, battle plan says be on 20m at this time.
Europe was LOUD, but no short skip at all! All I hear is west coast.

40m was ok propagation wise, but there just weren't many folks on.
Calling CQ wasn't doing much so I multiplier hunted, remembering to
turn AF gain down when going by 7205 (how many megawatts is Radio Moscow
using on that channel anyway?)

20m came alive around 0200Z, oddly enough. Short skip into 8/9 land was
loud, very short skip to FL and Carolinas, and the 6s and 7s were still
there. Nice spread of mults.

As for 80m, I'm just too weak there. Congrats to the 32 who struggled
to pull me out of the QRN, I know it wasn't easy. And also the one who 
erroneously decided I was a dupe, costing me a multiplier. :-(

States missed entirely: Maine, Tennessee (!!!), Mississippi, Oklahoma,
Hawaii, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota. And only 2 QSOs with Georgia --
under 1% of total -- very unusual.

73

-- ray WQ5L rrrocker at ingr.com

>From Steve Harrison <sharriso at sysplan.com>  Wed Aug 24 20:55:00 1994
From: Steve Harrison <sharriso at sysplan.com> (Steve Harrison)
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 15:55:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Radials and Aluminum Wire
Message-ID: <Pine.3.87.9408241500.B15882-0100000 at eagle>

A year ago, I went on a business trip to the big island of KH6 where we 
spent 3 week installing and operating a 75 kW, 49 MHz radar. The antennas were 
multielement phased dipoles with a steerable main lobe generally 75 degrees 
off the horizon; 18 gauge aluminum wire was used as a ground plane for 
the array.

Meanwhile, back at the rented beach house where I had my TS120S, I 
erected a 2 element 7 MHz fixed quad in a pair of tall palm trees using 
the aluminum wire, and oriented toward the mainland. Imagine my surprise 
and delight to find the SWR to be really nice and low, like less than 
1.2:1 at my design frequency of 7025 kHz! Wow! No tuning of the antenna 
is required! Let's get on the AIR!!!

Two days later, I sadly concluded, after observing that the bandwidth of 
the quad was greater than 500 kHz before the SWR exceeded 1.5:1, that the 
aluminum wire was doing a better job of heating the local environment 
than exciting the ionosphere. I also had my old Master Mobile whips, and 
erected one on the balcony; instantaneous comparisions between the quad 
and vertical whip showed better than several S-units improvement of 
received signal strength on the mobile antenna, no matter where the signal 
originated! Dragged out the ohmmeter and measured a couple of ohms. Lowered
the driven element, shorted the feedpoint and measured nearly zero ohms.
Raised the antenna again after using nuts and screws to assure tight connections
between the coax and wire, and still measured several ohms!

Moral: don't expect aluminum wire to have low RF resistance, especially 
for long elements!

73, Steve KO0U/4

P.S. By the way, there were actually four phased arrays, each fed by 
individual transmitters. The transmitters were all Class C with 8877s in 
the final, and were originally designed (and I think built) by John 
Brosnahan, our own W0UN. Talk about a small world! Each transmitter was 
capable of over 75 kW pulsed output, but generally we ran them at only 50 
kW each.



>From Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton at engineer.clemsonsc.NCR.COM  Wed Aug 24 20:55:00 1994
From: Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton at engineer.clemsonsc.NCR.COM (Skelton, Tom)
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 94 12:55:00 PDT
Subject: FW: Lightning
Message-ID: <2E5BA791 at admin.ClemsonSC.NCR.COM>


>>I am in the throes of recovering from my first lightning hit, and I am
still sensitive to the hassles.  I wanted to go ahead and post this to
everyone NOW because summer lightning/thunderstorms here aren't
nearly over.

Questions for the multitude -

Do you use Polyphaser stuff?  If so, how do you like it?
>>A local followed Polyphaser's exact plan, never unplugs his
equipment during lightning storms, and swears by it.

If not, why not?  What do you use?
>>I was stupid.  I had a bare minimum in station grounding and tower
ground.  This mistake cost me far more than buying some polyphaser
products and following their instructions.

If you use the same basic approach, but scaled back, in what respects do
you feel it's OK to do so?
>>IMHO, if you have a tower you follow all the ideas you presented
in your original post.  Otherwise, you pay the piper when Mother
Nature QSO's your antenna or power system.

Has your installation taken a direct hit?  Induced voltage hit?  Effects?
>>I had a secondary hit through came through the power system.
At the time, all coax cables were disconnected from the HF system.
Unfortunately, I still had the packetcluster 2m stuff going.
The  packet radio, computer, tnc, power supplies, rotors, keyers,
hf transceiver -- everything got zinged to some degree.

I'll be glad to take responses by E-mail and then summarize for the
reflector if there is sufficient interest.
>>Please post the other input if you get any.  I am so fed up with
all the hassle (repairs, insurance claims, etc.) I would like to
forewarn anyone that lightning protection is a serious design
element in your antenna system.  Pay now (lightning protection)
or pay later (lightning damage).

73, Pete
N4ZR at netcom.com

>>73, Tom WB4iUX   (Tom.Skelton at ClemsonSC.NCR.COM)

>From tree at cmicro.com (Larry Tyree)  Wed Aug 24 22:28:17 1994
From: tree at cmicro.com (Larry Tyree) (Larry Tyree)
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 94 14:28:17 PDT
Subject: NCJ Sprint dates
Message-ID: <9408242128.AA22889 at cmicro.com>


There seems to be a few people confused on when the NCJ Sprints will be
held next month.  The CW weekend is on Sunday, Sept 10th UTC time (Saturday
local time) and the SSB weekend is on Sunday, Sept 17th UTC time (Saturday
local time).

You can register your CW teams with me over internet: tree at cmicro.com
(note that the NCJ had the wrong address for me in the masthead).

You can register your SSB teams with Rick at his address
 aoniswan at ecuvm.cis.ecu.edu

You can also send your logs to these addresses after the contest.

There hasn't been much objection to the proposal of swapping the CW and
SSB weekends in February, so I would expect the SSB sprint to be the 
first weekend of February (the 4th) and the CW weekend the following
weekend.

If you need a complete copy of the rules, send rick or myself a message.

Tree N6TR
tree at cmicro.com