Topband: Tail Ending, Awesome QRN, Doghouse Rebuild

[charles Lewis]

The problem with "tailenders" is that all too many of
them jump the gun and step on the tail of the station
whose call I am trying to complete!  Since I have a
one track mind (or maybe half track), I only hear
tailenders as an annoying buzz breaking my
concentration, something I would like to swat.  I
learned early on that I don't want to encourage that. 
I found that if folks heard me respond immediately to
a tailender, then all the lids who thought they could
play at the same game would start their attempts and
things would quickly bog down. With my one track mind,
it works best for me to give a very clear indication
that I have finished with one contact and am ready for
another.  To anyone paying attention, it should be
obvious what I am doing.  I usually put people who
don't honor that on the back burner for a while.

My 160M QRN level is so bad here in Sao Tome that tail
ending is meaningless anyway.  I don't hear the
pileups people report.  I  usually hear only one or
two signals at a time cresting the QRN.  The way to
work me is call, call, call and call some more until
your signal is the one that pops to the surface of the
sea of QRN!  It is counterproductive to wander very
far from my QSX frequency to avoid the pileup QRM,
since I don't hear the pileup. On 160M, I seldom tune
more that 500 Hz +/- the QSX frequency.  It is a very
rare case for me to have difficulty copying a signal
because of QRM from another station.  QRN is the demon
here!  Of course, on those EXTREMELY RARE occasions
when the band is good and the QRN is low at my end,
the above statements don't apply. However, the last
time I experienced band conditons that good here was a
couple of nights back in 1997 when I was active on
160M as S92SS.

I am not QRV on 160M at this time because I am
rebuilding my 160/80 ATU that is located out in the
boggy field at the antenna base.  The old enclosure
was metal and had totally disintegrated due to
continual salt spray.  I hope to finish it by the end
of this weekend.  If my open frame relay can withstand
the high RF voltage on 80M, I will be able to switch
by remote control from the shack between 160M and
either 80M or 75M, depending upon how it is tuned in
advance.  Previously, I had to set up the ATU manually
for either 160M or 80M in advance.


73,
Charles - S9SS

I have lots of photos of Sao Tome in albums at:
http/groups.msn.com/s9ss

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html