[CQ-Contest] Be careful

[K3BU at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/2/2005 6:32:46 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tonyrogo at telegraphy.com writes:
>>Last December I used a vertical to
operate from my apartment in Cartagena, Colombia.  It was at about
185' overlooking the Caribbean and the performance quite frankly
sucked!  This year I'll be putting a tower on top of the building with
yagi's on the mast.<<


One has to be careful to compare wares. Don't expect single vertical to beat 
3 el Yagi on the roof.
Last 160m CW contest I fired up from C6AYB, using IC706 and spool of wire - 
half sloper (aginst the screen door frame "ground") running from the 9th floor 
hotel balcony down to a palm tree by the lagoon, perfect 50 ohm. No beverages, 
just AC line noise from broken air conditioner on the next building and some 
"helpers" untying the sloper. Worked very well, I beat the old LP record and 
had fun getting one more confirmation for the salt water verticality.
The point is, that those limited with real estate and QTH limitations, can 
have a ball going out and be a multiplier from the beach. Going LP or QRP cane 
be (XYL) rewarding and not getting hernia. 
I was seriously considering building traveling setup with trailer and going 
to the beach (still might try low bands from VE1BY), but stumbled on this 170 
acre rhombic farm on the salt marsh, can't just overlook that :-) 
What the salt water does is give you 10 - 15 dB advantage and QUIET RX. Team 
Vertical did remarkable job in researching the phenomena and gearing up for 
taking advantage of it. It sure got my attention and looks like solved (?) the 
dilemma oceanfront vs. high hills. The "infinite" plane of liquid copper sure 
hogs those signals.
So basically you gotta know it, figure out how to take advantage of it for 
particular contest/situation. Stand by for 64 element beechy vertical arrays :-)

Yuri, K3BU.us
N2EE, NT1E flagships of Tesla RC