[CQ-Contest] Where will NAQP SSB be?

[George Fremin III]

On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 06:28:34AM -0800, Scott Robbins wrote:
> So - doing antenna work at K4JNY yesterday with Jeff, W4NZ and K0EJ included
> putting up another low dipole for 75/80m use.  As were were tuning it, the
> question came up:
> 
> Where is the NAQP SSB contest on 75m now going to be?
> 
> 3700?
> 
> 3850?
> 
> 3625? 
> 
> I'm assuming we're going to pile in on the lower part of the new SSB part to
> avoid the conflicts we've had with non-contest use of the band in years past. 
> Am I right?


That sounds good to me - of course it might be a good idea to go where
the general class and Advanced class guys can be worked too but it
would seem to me that some high percentage of HF ops that are active
are surely Extra class now - I mean why would you not go ahead and get
your Extra if you doing any HF operating at all?

I think that N2IC raises the real question. What to do about antennas.
I do not really have a problem over most of the band with my antennas
after I finally solved the 75/80 meter problem..

Over the years I have struggled with how to cover the frequencies
around 3.500 and 3.800 without having to do some sort of re-tuning of
the antennas or having to use an antenna tuner - the tuner is a real
pain at 1500 watts as it is an expense I would rather not have.  I
spent way too many hours at N5AU trying to solve this problem.

My final solution was to use the W6NL coax trick.  

http://www.cebik.com/trans/wb.html

My antenna for 80 meters are some half wave sloping dipoles from my
120' tower.  They are cut for about 3.700 mhz I have 1 wavelength of
RG8x cable from each antenna feed point coming back to the base of the
tower and then I go into my Ameritron RCS8 switch box.  On the output
side of the RCS8 I have a 1/4 wavelength of 75 ohm coax and then the
50 ohm hardline back to the shack.

The SWR on my northeast and northwest slopers looks like this in the
shack. I have not tried to make it better or messed with it since it
works out for me in the places I operate.

        NE      NW

3.500   1.22    1.20
3.525   1.30    1.35
3.500   1.45    1.55
3.560   1.50    1.60
3.575   1.60    1.75
3.600   1.75    1.85
3.625   1.90    1.98
3.650   2.00    2.10
3.675   2.15    2.10
3.700   2.20    2.10
3.725   2.20    1.90
3.740   2.00    1.85
3.500   1.95    1.80
3.750   1.85    1.70
3.800   1.75    1.60
3.825   1.65    1.60
3.850   1.65    1.60
3.875   1.65    1.65
3.900   1.70    1.70
3.925   1.75    1.80
3.950   1.85    1.95
3.975   1.95    2.20
4.000   2.20    2.25


The best part has been being able to operate in either place without
thinking about it - now I am sure I will have to retune the amp some
as I move from 3.600 to 3.800 but that is life I guess.

-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr