This is the exact antenna I now have up for 10 and 15. I nested the loops and tied to a common feed. I can send anyone interested the EZNEC file. It works fine and has a 50 ohm impedance. I did use a balun at the feed, the author did not. Its horizontally polarized and has decent gain. Its bi-directional and the nulls on the sides are rather sharp. I ran some fishing line from one corner to a brick on the ground. When I want to rotate it I run out and move the brick. That was something of a pain in CQWW as the back yard is a hill and was wet! I left it aimed at EU most of the day, then would swing it 90 degrees and work JA and SA from sundown onward. In two weeks I’ve worked BYs, JT, JA , 9M6 and others on 10. I hear XU7ACY and 3w2BB fine but can’t crack the pileups.

For SS I may just point it NW and leave it. I doubt Ill be on 10 much. Probably start on 20 and then move to 40. The contest always starts with runs by the West Coast on 15 where they jump to the lead working lots of east coast mults. Meanwhile, it always seems impossible to get a 15 run going from the east coast and even if you do there are not many mults to be had. This year could be different however! I usually start with the second radio on 15 doing S&P to get the West Coast mults taken care of.

Have fun in SS everyone! Looks like house guests will limit my time….

73,

Hal N4GG

-----Original Message-----
From: secc-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:secc-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Clarke
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 9:32 PM
To: secc@contesting.com
Subject: [SECC] SS CW 2011 - Are You Ready?

  Something I noticed this past weekend about 15 and 10 meters during CQWW -  Both of those bands were excellent for DX but there was also a lot of short skip and loud back scatter stations. It might be possible to run with a decent rate on both 15/10 meters in SS this year.

Check out this link for a simple loop antenna that works pretty good on both of those bands.  http://kt4qw.com/acan1.htm . This is what I have been using for 6 meters for the last several years. I built one for 10 meters a few weeks ago and it works great. It’s a very good antenna for the time and effort it takes to build one and put it up in a tree.  It also fills in the gaps I get with all the lobes in the antenna pattern of my 130 ft center fed zepp. I plan on also building one for 15 meters before SS. I think this is the same antenna that N4GG mentioned in his post.

My plan is to try to do 24 hours SOLP. Hope to work a bunch of SECC members.

Jeff KU8E