So how do the "All Wire" guys succeed?

Dave / N7EX n0dh at comtch.iea.com
Tue Dec 3 09:49:15 EST 1996


Here's the setup at N7EX, While not totally all wire (I do have a
TRibander at 60') Its still a modest station which has garnered me four
first place finishes in my section (EWA) in the last 3 years (2 in IARU,
one ARRL 160, and one ARRL RTTY roundup).

QTH: 15acres on the west side of a N/S mountain ridge. The top of the
ridge is at 3500' and my QTH is at 2600'. The slope of the ridge is 5 to
6 degrees. Getting out to the east is a bit of a chalange but to the
west as the guy says ..."SMOKIN"...

Receive Antennas: Two 2 wire BEverages each about 600' long, one pair
NE/SW and one pair NW/SE. The beverages are about 10' high.

160M-Ant #1: Two inverted L's fed in phase. Each L is 90' by 70' long.
They are spaced 250' apart. The phasing is switchable from broadside
(SE/NW) to endfire (NE/SW). Each L currently has 35 radials under it
(there's 10,000' of wire right there ~8^).

160M Ant #2: Inverted V top at 90 feet, ends at about 45'

80M Ant #1: Half Square, favors SE/NW

80M Ant #2: Full sized elevated wire ground plane (suspended from the
one of the ropes at the end of one of the 160M Inverted L's)with eight
radials, 15' to 20' above the ground.

40M Ant #1: 3 element wire beam at about 80', 68' "boom", The beam uses
only 4 trees and the reflector and director are bent back towards the
driven element support trees. This configuration gives 50 ohm feed
point, broadband width (less tham 2:1 SWR from 7 to 7.25) and a wide
beam width (80 degrees) which is what you want in a "fixed" beam. I
switch a coil in and out of the director and refletor to "reverse" the
direction from NE to SW.

40M Ant #2: Dipole at 80' favors SE/NW (covers the areas off the "sides"
of the beam.

30M: Dipole at 90'

20-15-10 A4 tribander at 60'

12 and 17M: Experimental dipole with linear loading for both bands...not
"perfected" yet.

Oh yea and an old Butternut HF6 that sits atop a 30' x 40' steel barn
for a ground plane as a backup antenna should any of the above fail
during a contets at least I still have something on the air. The B'nut
hardly gets used these days as the wire antennas ususally kick its butt,
but for an all band antenna on a limited budget it works decently if not
competatively as long as you can get a good ground plane under it.

Equipment suite: TS-850, TL-922, PK232's for packet and RTTY, ANC4 noise
canceller, Timewave 599+ audio filter.
486DX2-66 PC Clone ruinning TRLOG and WF1B RTTY contest softwere.

See you all in the 160 test this weekend!

Dave Henderson
N7EX ( EX....N0DH that is!)
Spokane, WA (one of the great radio black holes)

"The bad news....Life is hard"
"The good news...Life is short"
"The Moral...Eat Dessert first, chase DX and Contest often"

>From trey at cisco.com (Trey Garlough)  Tue Dec  3 17:49:41 1996
From: trey at cisco.com (Trey Garlough) (Trey Garlough)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 96 9:49:41 PST
Subject: No subject
Message-ID: <CMM.0.90.4.849635381.trey at scv-cse-4.cisco.com>

P40W writes about Aruba (Reader's Digest version):

> When you spread this capital outlay over many years it is 
> truely  insignificant.  Extravagent, hardly, but effective, definitely.

> But time is free, right?

Reading Crovelli's excellent note explaining how it's not as expensive
as one might think reminds me that fixating on the financial aspects
of the hobby, as in the message that started this thread, is silly.
No one takes up ham radio as a hobby because it's a good investment.
If I wanted a hobby that was going to make me rich, I would collect
rare coins, or baseball cards, or start a chain letter on email.

--Trey, N5KO

>From jefft at atlanta.com (Jeff Tucker)  Tue Dec  3 13:18:00 1996
From: jefft at atlanta.com (Jeff Tucker) (Jeff Tucker)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 13:18:00
Subject: 
Message-ID: <199612031822.NAA09256 at postal.atlanta.net>

Absolutely. I've always told people how neat it was that I could enjoy
my hobby without spending money.  After all, once you have equipment,
you can enjoy the hobby for the cost of electricity.  If you get into flying,
you can't do anything without paying for gas each and every time you
do it.  Even stamp collectors can't really participate in their hobby without
spending money.  I like that fact that I can get on the radio any time I want,
or enter any contest, and it costs me $0 per minute.  Heck, that's cheaper
than playing on the internet!

73
Jeff N9HZQ

 ----------
From:  Trey Garlough
Sent:  Tuesday, December 03, 1996 9:49 AM
To:  Jeff Tucker; cq-contest at tgv.com

P40W writes about Aruba (Reader's Digest version):

> When you spread this capital outlay over many years it is
> truely  insignificant.  Extravagent, hardly, but effective, definitely.

> But time is free, right?

Reading Crovelli's excellent note explaining how it's not as expensive
as one might think reminds me that fixating on the financial aspects
of the hobby, as in the message that started this thread, is silly.
No one takes up ham radio as a hobby because it's a good investment.
If I wanted a hobby that was going to make me rich, I would collect
rare coins, or baseball cards, or start a chain letter on email.

 --Trey, N5KO



 --
Jeff Tucker, N9HZQ
Williams Consulting, Inc.
jefft at atlanta.com




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