KA9FOX in TG / More on antennas

Tue Feb 21 11:37:32 EST 1995

My little DX announcement and then an antenna question:

First, I will be a single op entry in the ARRL DX SSB contest March 4-5 from
Guatemala.  I'll use the call TG0AA or TG0DX.  Before & after the contest,
I'll operate as TG/KA9FOX from TG9AJR's QTH.  

ANTENNA STUFF:
I was to operate from QTH of TG9GI, but that didn't work out.  TG9AJR has
found me a building in the mountains to operate from, and is working on
putting up a temporary 50 ft. tower there.  WB2K sold me his A3S with 40m
add-on kit.  I received many replies telling me that there are better
antennas, but the price was right and he has modified the antenna so it ships
in 4ft PVC tubes.  Perfect!

Last weekend W0AIH made me a simple 160m/80m fan dipole that I will install
as an inverted Vee off the 50ft tower.  As I have learned by many of the
replies I received, this antenna may not work well, especially for 160m.  A
few people suggested buying an HF2V + 160m kit.  K1VR also suggested a
"raised" HF2V.

My questions:  Anybody have experiences with the HF2V + 160m kit that they'd
like to share with me?  Anybody have one they want to sell?  :-)

Reply directly to me and I can send summaries to anyone that wants one.  I
didn't get a chance to acknowledge all the replies I received from my last
question, but THANKS to you all!

Adios!

Scott KA9FOX
ka9fox at aol.com

>From Bill H Parry <bill at tenet.edu>  Tue Feb 21 16:41:37 1995
From: Bill H Parry <bill at tenet.edu> (Bill H Parry)
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 10:41:37 -0600 (CST)
Subject: ARRL CW DX 15 W5VX
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9502211000.A6043-0100000 at Gayle-Gaston.tenet.edu>

                   ARRL INTERNATIONAL DX CONTEST 1995

      Call: W5VX                     Country:  United States
      Mode: CW                       Category: Single Operator

      BAND     QSO    QSO PTS PTS/Q COUNTRIES

      160        0        0   0.0        0
       80        0        0   0.0        0
       40        0        0   0.0        0
       20        0        0   0.0        0
       15      879     2634   3.0       91
       10        0        0   0.0        0
     --------------------------------------

     Totals    879     2634   3.0       91  =   239,694

All reports sent were 59(9), unless otherwise noted.

Equipment Description:

TS950, SB220, 6 element 15 yagi @ 90 ft

I was expecting a really poor weekend for the contest- poor propagation 
and lots of local line noise. The conditions were fine (really better 
than we deserve for this time in the sunspot cycle) and my line noise 
went away for the duration of the contest. My rule of thumb is that more 
than 50% of my Qs must be from JA to do well. I guess that conditions 
were too good because I only have about 35% (280) from JA. This is, 
however, better than several years. Both Ja and european runs were slow, 
only two hours over 100, just steady. Multipliers were sparse. I did 
accidentally catch a few of the multis moving mults and snuck in at the 
end ( you gotta watch up around 070 - 090). All-in-all a good one!

					Bill, W5VX

>From Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton at engineer.ClemsonSC.ATTGIS.COM  Tue Feb 21 20:36:00 1995
From: Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton at engineer.ClemsonSC.ATTGIS.COM (Skelton, Tom)
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 12:36:00 PST
Subject: KA9FOX's Swan Song (The Guatemala Blues)
Message-ID: <2F4A5128 at admin.ClemsonSC.ATTGIS.COM>

Dateline Clemson, SC.   (TPI - Tiger Press International)

For those who haven't heard, the KA9FOX BABELIST has
now been reduced to a single femme fatale, and dear Scotty
is now out trying to buy a piece of petrified coal set in a soft
metallic holder.

In memory of the loss of this fine young contester, I recommend
we have a special memorial service at the Dayton hamfest.  We
can each get up and tell nice stories about Scott and how he had
really done some great things.  Hopefully, we'll talk about his super
score from Guatemala in the ARRL DX SSB test and how we
gladly got that TG multiplier on 6 bands.  Even those of us who
have never had the chance to meet him, but can remember the
devil-may-care photos from NCJ of the Sultans of Schwinggggggg
room at Dayton 94, will have some fond memory of him.

We can end the meeting by opening a 1968 bottle of Dom Perignon
(or 1994 MAD DOG 20-20, whatever winds your clock) and toast
his memory as a contester.

'Tis a sad, sad day..........     :* -{

73, Tom WB4iUX
Tom.Skelton at ClemsonSC.ATTGIS.COM

>From Larry Schimelpfenig <lschim at mailstorm.dot.gov>  Tue Feb 21 17:19:21 1995
From: Larry Schimelpfenig <lschim at mailstorm.dot.gov> (Larry Schimelpfenig)
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 12:19:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: K7SV ARRLCW L/P SCORE
Message-ID: <Pine.3.07.9502211221.A9488-c100000 at mailstorm.dot.gov>

My misplaced 7 land nemesis (K7GM) picked a poor weekend to attend a
convention of some sort. I don't think one could ask for much better condx
considering where we are in the cycle of the great bright yellow orb. I
had a blast! Single Op, Low Power, All Band, Unassisted.

Band	Q's	Mults
160	 41	27
 80	108	52
 40	352	69
 20	429	82
 15	432	75
 10	 59	37
total  1421    342   =    1,457,946

IC735/C-Line, 100W, KT34XA at 55' 20-10, rotatable dipole @60' 40, N4KG
special and 40mtr extended zepp 80, 65' top loaded vertical 160 and two
350 ft beverages.

Super runs on 40, 20, and 15. Worked about 20 Eur on skewed patch on 10.
Kinda tough with l/p, but only heard one Eur that I couldn't work (DL) on 10.
Contrary to earlier thoughts, the KT34XA is smokin' just fine on 15.
Problem on 20 and 15 is getting squeezed up into the digital stuff, and
some of those guys were very apparently doing the work of agitators. Did
frequently manage to hold a frequency below .025 on any of the bands and
keep fairly good runs going. Only one hassle over freq with an N2 on 40.
A certain W6 came on top of me calling cq several times, but all I had to
do was spin the beam his way, and he's go away. Using the second rig in
the normal sense didn't work so well with low power. What did work great
was using the second receiver to line up mults before switching bands. If
I had a hot run going, set a short delay between cq's and didn't use th
second radio. If the runs were slow, set the delay longer, and looked for
pile ups on other bands. If the run was petering out and I had a good
"shopping list" for another band, I'd make the move. It often happened
that by the time I moved, the pile up had worked itself down, and the mult
was an easy catch. Sure was easy to tell when someone spotted a station! I
was really pleased to find lonely VQ9TP and 4S0AA calling cq on 40 Sunday
morning. Easy to work them before the packet pileups ensued.  

Can anyone tell me how W1PH and W2TZ did? Any other decent low power scores?

As things look right now, we'll probably put the "bigger" iron at NJ4F on
for the WPX CW in May. After that it's time to go fishin'. Hope y'all had
as much fun in this test as I did.

73 de Larry K7SV - lschim at mailstorm.dot.gov
Still havin' fun! Low power's kool (sometimes) yeah