Topband: Inverted L + FCP Report

[Markus Hansen]

Inverted L + FCP Report (December 2, 2012)

Over the last approx. 20 Years I have operated in quite a few 160 contests from my city lot situated on a mountain side on rocky poor soil in North Vancouver BC which is located in the south west corner of the province.  I have tried many different 160 meter antenna configurations to try and improve my score without much success.  My latest antenna was a full wave very odd shaped 160 meter loop which was better than previous, loaded dipoles, dipoles and inverted L's fed against odd length radials in the  ground. 

Several months ago I decided to give the inverted L another try but this time with a FCP replacing my ground radials.  

The FCP is located 15 feet above the ground over one end of our home.  The vertical wire is 61 feet and then horizontal for 64 feet with another 51 feet of wire sloping down at 40 degrees from the end of the 64 foot length of wire for a total wire length of 176 ft.  (I have two 90 foot trees on opposite sides of our city lot to support wire antennas) This puts the maximum radiating current in the top 1/16th section of the vertical wire above all the surrounding houses, trees, power line poles etc. Since the radiating element is longer than a ¼ wave length I matched it to 50 ohms at 1824 kHz with a series connected high voltage capacitor of 300 pf.  The isolation balun was purchased from Balun Designs,  Model 1142s as recommended by K2AV.  The measured 2:1 BW is 52 KHz.  

I was active this weekend during the ARRL 160 meter contest running 100 Watts.  I am very happy to report that I was able to hold a CQ freq. for lengthy periods and many stations called me.  This has never happened before.  Also in S&P most often I was heard on the first call even when the calling station was right at my receiver noise level.  In addition I worked the following prefixes with little difficulty.  PJ2, C6 XE, KH6, KH8, KL7 and JA's.  I even had a JA call me when I was calling CQ.  This never happened before.  I called CE/K7CA several times and he came back with VE7? but he was unable to get the rest of my call.  

In addition, several times I heard local hams who run high power ( approx. +12 db advantage to my 100 watts) call someone and make a contact.  I would call as well and every time I was also able to make the contact.

Obviously my new antenna is working and my conclusion, it is working very well. 

Thank you Guy, K2AV for you research and Jack, W0UCE for publishing Guy's information on your web site
at http://www.w0uce.net/K2AVantennas.html

Markus 
North Vancouver, BC  CANADA
WEB:  www.ve7ca.net