[CQ-Contest] Re: contesting with "small" antennas

[Larry Schimelpfenig]

I can't speak for KQ2M, but if you ever see all the wire yagi's etc that Phil KT3Y has in the air,
and his well equipped station, you understand why Phil not only feels loud, but is. The only drawback 
is the folks with aluminum tubing can turn it any direction, but Phil does cover the critical directions.
I was talking with him at one of the local hamfests last month, and he's now looking at putting up
fixed yagi stacks. A few years ago, every time I saw Phil at a hamfest, he was carting another
Johnson KW matchbox around. Since then every time I see him at a hamfest he's carting at least
several hundred feet of ladder-line around. He has mailboxes in various positions in the yard that
house tuners (not the Johnsons!). There's a tragic story about one catching fire and damaging 
his kitchen. 

Now regarding Jim's comments, we can sometimes fool ourselves when testing new antennas.  I 
have an open wire fed 80 meter dipole at about 50 feet in the trees. Shortly after putting it up, I 
got involved in some contest when condx were exceptional on 80. I could call cq with low power
and run (okay walk) Eur. I really felt loud! I put up something vertically polarized a while later. 
When the next contest rolled around, I got on 80 and felt that this antenna was terrible. So I 
connected the super dipole and voila it wasn't any better. In that case I had a reference to go 
back to. I remember reading comments from K8CC concerning testing of new antennas. As I
recall his recommendation was to test it over a period of time, and not to get discouraged with
first impressions. 

I'm really not sure how well my KT34XA is working on 15 meters, but during the IARU I was running
Eur well, and that made me feel loud. There were very few stations heard that I couldn't work 
within a call or two. There are a lot of head games in all sports including radio!  

73 de Larry K7SV

-----Original Message-----
From:	Jim Reisert AD1C [SMTP:jjreisert at alum.mit.edu]
Sent:	Tuesday, July 14, 1998 9:26 PM
To:	cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject:	Re: [CQ-Contest] Re: contesting with "small" antennas 


At 10:05 AM 7/14/98 -0400, Bill Fisher - W4AN wrote:

>I was having a discussion with W1RR last night, and we both agreed that 
>FEELING loud is probably more important than actually being loud.  
>I'm sure both KQ2M and KT3Y operate the contest like they were operating 
>from a super station.  

I think Bill hit the nail on the head.  When I'm running with my 30' (10M)
high G5RV, and I have stations like JY9QJ call in not only on 40 but on 75
also, I FEEL LOUD.  When I can have a dozen hours in a contest over
60/hour, that energizes you.  When you can beat the occasional big gun in a
pileup...

If you feel like a winner, you will be one.

73 - Jim AD1C

--
Jim Reisert AD1C <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>      http://jjr.ne.mediaone.net/


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