[SECC] CQ160 CW WF4W Single Op HP

Sun Feb 7 12:03:21 EST 2021

I agree with Bill, and hundreds of others, that inverted L's can work well.
I did a presentation on what my research came up with to make one work well
here in the poor ground of South Carolina. A video of a talk to the DDCC
about that can be found here.
Low Band Vertical Antenna Decisions at N4XL.: Deep Dixie Contest Club
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNznZ64aY-4
It's not technical enough for many people, but many have appreciated the
more general lessons it contains. It's a long talk.

Also worth looking at is N6LF's web pages at
https://www.antennasbyn6lf.com/arrl_antenna_articles/
The ones for QEX about his ground radial system experiments.

Some key take away points from all that research came from those N6LF
experiments and ARRL charts about the number and length of ground radials
and Radiation Resistance. Some disagree with me, but these have become my
talking points.
1) Make the vertical height be as high as possible. Not as high as
convenient, as high as you can. That makes radiation resistance be high and
reduces the effects of ground losses.
2) 32 radials seems to be a reasonable bang for the buck cutoff point. Of
course, the more the better your results.
3) Until you lay down more than 32, length isn't all that important. 1/8
wave is fine and you're mainly wasting wire to try and get more gain by
laying out longer ones. You're better off laying a lot of short ones then a
small number of longer ones.

I had tried three other 160 antennas before putting up this one. I now have
65 ft vertical and 60 ft horizontal and 45 variable length buried radials.
Haven't done a full time 160 effort yet, but in the few domestic contests
I've played in I find with only 100 watts I can run at the 80+ q/hr rate
(CW easier then SSB of course), have worked several on the west coast when
others in SC say they could barely hear them, and have improved 160 DX
totals by 4-5 times over what I used to get with previous antennas. Even
K4BAI manages to find me every time. Oh wait... That happens anyway. John
is just phenomenal.

Of course, YMMV.

Kevan N4XL

On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 11:27 AM RJ Hubbard <rj.wf4w at gmail.com> wrote:

> thanks, Bill. I finished a build of a 160m inverted L yesterday. I only
> put down 3x 135' radials so I definitely need to add more. The antenna
> works - but I wasnt on the air last night to see how it did. I had it
> monitoring FT8 and it didnt receive any DX - but I also didnt see anyone
> else working DX so perhaps conditions were poor...
>
> I'll keep fiddling with it - definitely add more radials as tht made a
> world of difference on my 6BTV vertical. Just need to get creative on their
> placement - 135' is loooong  :)
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 10:11 AM Bill Coleman <aa4lr at arrl.net> wrote:
>
>> Inverted L’s work great on 160m, provided you put down enough radials.
>>
>> I had a trapped 160, 80 and 40m inverted L up in Floyd county with 24
>> radials. Worked very well up there. I’ve put up that antenna in Walton and
>> Fulton counties. In Walton, I used a top fence rail as a radial, in Fulton,
>> I have two elevated radials. It doesn’t work nearly as well as it did in
>> Floyd county.
>>
>> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 7:40 AM, RJ Hubbard <rj.wf4w at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> > From: <webform at b4h.net>
>> > Date: Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 7:34 AM
>> > Subject: CQ160 CW WF4W Single Op HP
>> > To: <3830 at contesting.com>, <rj.wf4w at gmail.com>
>> >
>> >
>> >                     CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2021
>> >
>> > Call: WF4W
>> > Operator(s): WF4W
>> > Station: WF4W
>> >
>> > Class: Single Op HP
>> > QTH:
>> > Operating Time (hrs): 6
>> >
>> > Summary:
>> > Total:  QSOs = 427  State/Prov = 52  Countries = 4  Total Score = 52,696
>> >
>> > Club: South East Contest Club
>> >
>> > Comments:
>> >
>> > My 160m game is WEAK! My 80/160m OCF is prettyt much an NVIS antenna -
>> it's
>> > worthless. So I stuck a 19' lenght of wire into the 80m resonator of my
>> 6btv and
>> > turned it into an invered L :) -- works pretty well domestically - DX
>> isnt
>> > happening on this thing though.
>> >
>> > Still a lot of fun - what CW contest ISNT fun? I was able to get some
>> pretty
>> > decent runs and rates and I'm beginning to like S&P more and more as I
>> find
>> > the balance between runs and S&P.
>> >
>> >
>> > Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > SECC mailing list
>> > SECC at contesting.com
>> > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/secc
>>
>> Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
>> Web: http://boringhamradiopart.blogspot.com
>> Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
>>             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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