TopBand: Comment on slinky on 40 meters

[km1h @ juno.com]

Tnx for the comments Mel. 
I use mine regularly on 40 and 30M but sometimes a preamp helps on 30. On
40M they are used when rain/snow static wipes out the yagi.

On Saturday  I put up a new 5 Slinky Beverage on AF to replace a 7 yr old
rusty one. This time I terminated in 1200 Ohms but still used the 9:1
matching xfmr....had a few spares all built.
I noticed exceptional F/R; over 30dB but it may just have been condx. It
will take several weeks to be certain but I'm already thinking about
wiring a 2:1 xfmr to run off the 9:1; that should be close enough to what
I need for a 75 Ohm feedline. 

One other thing surfaced in the memory here. Many months ago someone
mentioned that a regular Beverage made from galvanized fence wire was
also very quiet and appeared to offer significant  SNR improvement over
copper wire. Since the Slinky is cadmium plated steel I wonder if there
may be some correlation. 

I spent considerable time listening on 80 and 160 during CQWW and noticed
that I was hearing many, many calls Q5 wheras other US stations...mainly
multis, were not replying at all or lots of QRZ?  The exception was K1KI
who was hearing very well indeed. 

I now have 4 conventional Beverages of 500-900' lengths and 4 Slinkys of
175'. I intend to do a lot of listening and A:B switching and get a
better feel for things. 

73  Carl  KM1H





On Mon, 01 Dec 1997 08:31:06 -0500 Melvin J Crichton
<CRICHTON_MELVIN_J@LILLY.COM> writes:
>I used the new Europe slinky as receive antenna in the CQWW on 160, 
>80, and 40
>meters.
>
>It was somewhat noisy on 160, less noisy on 80, and DEAD QUIET on 
>40!!! I
>could find a signal down in the mud on the 40 vertical or dipole, then 
>flip to
>slinky and the noise level disappeared completely with little loss in 
>strength
>(maybe 2-3 S units). But with no background noise to deal with I could 
>tighten
>the TS940's VBT to nil and still pull signals out.  Almost NO QRM to 
>deal
>with!!  Needless to say, when the band got crowded I used it all the 
>time, as
>it seemed to hear the Caribbean and Central American stations OK 
>(higher
>signal strength, so a signal off the side or from behind was still 
>quite
>readable)
>
>Has anybody else noticed the slinky's performance on 40 meters? Not 
>much
>noticed when I tried it on 20 (no beam here, so I try EVERY antenna I 
>have on
>20-10)
>
>BTW... the SWR problem I noticed earlier  was poor coax... replaced it 
>Friday
>before the test and all OK now.
>
>I even hustled a 30 foot tall inverted L into place Friday using the 
>elevated
>radials on my 80 meter vertical and a 125 foot couterpoise radial... 
>seemed to
>perform slightly better than the 45 foot high dipole, but we'll give 
>it a good
>test this weekend.
>
>Carl..... Thanks again for the slinky... it's great!!!
>
>Mel KJ9C
>
>
>
>
>--
>FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/topband.html
>Submissions:              topband@contesting.com
>Administrative requests:  topband-REQUEST@contesting.com
>Problems:                 owner-topband@contesting.com
>

--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/topband.html
Submissions:              topband@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  topband-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-topband@contesting.com