Topband: beginnner's questions

[Stephen Schoeffel]

Thank-you to all those who responded to my earlier
post regarding my "beginner's questions."

If all goes well, I will be operating in the SSB
contest this weekend together with Jeff, VE7HPS. We
will most likely be using my callsign (VE7OSO). I have
found a spot in the hills about a 40 minute drive from
where I live (60 miles east of Vancouver, BC). It is a
flat parking area beside an old logging road. Below
this area to to the South East is a sloping hillside
that goes down about a 1000 feet to the valley below.
I plan to use 60 feet of PVC pipe as a mast to support
a vertical wire antenna. It will be fed at approx. 10
feet above ground, at the roof of my camper-van. The
loading coil will be about 2 feet from the top, and
will be wound on the PVC pipe. On top I plan to screw
a 102" stainless steel whip. We plan to use as many
ground radials as possible, just getting as much wire
as possible out in all directions, especially SE,
below the antenna. This will be the only antenna we
will have for TX and RX, but we will be far away from
any sources of QRM (hopefully). We will be running
about 100 watts power. It turned out a little bit
rushed to get everything ready in time, but hopefully
this will be a good initiation to contesting and
topband all at once.

Does anyone see any major flaws in the above plan, or
some change that would make things work a lot better?

I have no experience on 160 and do not really know
"what happens where." At what frequency should the
antenna be resonant and what area between 1.8 and 2
MHz does most of the SSB contesting take place?

Thank-you in advance for your responses. I am starting
to get really excited about this weekends
camping/contesting combo.

73,

Stephen
VE7OSO



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