[SECC] update from NQ4I

[Rick Dougherty]

Hello all SECC'ers...was home during the wpx cw test, and did operate a
little on 15m...but the band opening on Sat on 10m was too much to
resist...I had to see how the new and improved 10m stacks were working..boy
did I find out...first off I had major problems with the 120 ft antenna
before...the feedline measured 2.2 db of loss vs 0.2 db for the rest..so I
bought and made 4 new individual feedlines ...then the antenna had some
dimensional errors...while the antennas were on the ground, these were
corrected...the new and improved stack has been up over 4 weeks, and no
propagation on 10m to Europe to see how it worked...Sat was the deciding
factor...

The 120 ft antenna now works like gang busters..and the stack...well it is
doing great too...i made 60+ qso's on ssb and did a/b tests with all
antennas and the stack...the stack was better in 54 instances and tied the
120 ft antenna the remaining times...so I feel confident that we will be
doing the contest season with the best possible combination on 10m...I was
amazed how many eu stations told me that I was the only stateside on ssb
they could hear...

I am working on the 80 meter 2 ele...got some hardware to replace on the
elements...and will be designing a new system to switch it from ssb top cw
from the shack...I sure am glad its down on the ground for the
summer...gives me a lot less to worry about during storm season...hi....in
playing around on cw...i found out that the FT=1000mp does ok with one 500
hz filter, but it sure needs the other 500 hz filter to tighten it up...so
gotta get more filters for the 1000mp's....spoke with K4EA at the SEDXC
club meeting and he is giving thought to operating with us in the cqww cw
on 10m...we are looking forward to that one too...will see most of you at
the ATL hamfest this coming Sat...73 de Rick

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