[CQ-Contest] What to expect from 10 meters???

[John Bastin K8AJS]

On Dec 7, 2005, at 8:45 AM, Paul J. Piercey wrote:

>
> One piece of advice I would give you is to make up a 10M dipole to use
> instead of the 80M dipole. Only about 20 ft long and can be put in  
> place of
> your 80M antenna if need be for the duration of the contest or as  
> long as
> you want to operate. Might give you a fighting chance :)

I'm not sure what advantage this would deliver. A half-wave dipole on  
80 meters, depending on where in the band it is cut for, is very  
close to 7 half waves on 10. With careful pruning, you can make that  
wire play nicely on both bands, although even in West Virginia it may  
be too cold right now to spend a lot of time outside with an antenna  
bridge and wire cutters (I'm probably only 150 miles north of Jacob,  
and it's a little over 10 degrees F here today).

Even without spending a lot of time adjusting, feedpoint impedance at  
the center of that antenna should be low enough to be usable. If you  
have an antenna tuner, you'll have no problem at all.

I'm sure that 117 - 124 feet of wire won't hurt, versus 16 feet of  
wire for your 10M dipole. The more wire in the air, the better.

Hope this helps.

73,

John E Bastin, K8AJS
jbastin at sssnet.com
http://www.qsl.net/k8ajs/