[SECC] Contest Season

[Tommy]

> It would be interesting to hear what's going on with everyone else.....

 

 

After losing all wire antennas and 600' of open wire feeder this past June,
to a tornado, some progress is being made.

 

I had been using EF Johnson 4" ceramic spacers for my run of open wire, but
lost the majority of them in the storm. This open wire I just put up is
using these new white plastic coat hangers. You can get seven spacers out of
each coat hanger. BUT DON'T DO IT!!! They seem quite lossy plus they are
very much affected by rain or a damp ground. I use #14 hard drawn stranded
copper wire and have the entire feed line supported on 14' 4x4 post set 2'
in the ground (so I can drive my tractor under them while cutting grass!!).
I intend to replace all plastic spacers with Teflon rod.

 

I have a single 80m dipole up about 60'. Directly behind that, I have a 2-el
40m yagi, both pointed just south of London. If you align the 80m dipole and
the yagi center insulators, the 80m dipole adds about 0.4dB forward gain,
but about 14 dB to the F/B ratio. That sure helps knocking down the Florida
40m QRN storm generators. Next to go up is either a 3-el quad or yagi, I
haven't decided which yet.

 

My primary Omni 6+ receiver bit-the-dust, so have been using my back up. My
Icom IC-781 had failed back in March and I had been trying to troubleshoot
it without having much success. I was very fortunate to have a very
technically knowledgeable ham up in Woodstock offer to 'look at it for me'.
He didn't just look at it, he found the problem plus he fixed the UPS
shipping damage to the front of the radio. Instead of UPS'ing the radio back
to Valdosta, I drove up to Woodstock, through that murderous Atlanta traffic
mess to pick up the radio myself. We were fortunate to have Ralph/K1ZZI
guide us to a great Italian restaurant in Woodstock where I gorged myself
with some the best pizza I've ever had!

 

Was going to start on my 20m antenna this week, but my 98 yr old Mother is
having some problems and I have to take care of that. But I'm going to move
the 80m dipole so it's covering the USA for CW SS, then going to put up the
20m antenna. A rather busy schedule for the rest of this month. But after
it's all done I hope to be able to contribute to the SECC scoring totals
this fall.

 

73 to all,

 

Tom - W4BQF 

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