Topband: 160 vertical advice

[Don Kirk]

Hi Bill,

As Wes already mentioned, your SWR bandwidth is suspicious as is your
minimum SWR.  Nevertheless your signal this morning was pretty much on par
with the strongest signals I have ever heard from KH6 land on 160 meters.

When I worked you this morning signals were not that great, but after our
QSO your signal really came up.  Your signal came up so much that I decided
to record one of your CQs at around 0608 UTC when you were running around
10 dB over my noise floor, and I even saw your signal increase to around 15
dB over my noise floor for a while a bit later on.  Your RX capabilities
appeared to be pretty good too since you copied my measly 100 watts before
signals really came up.

I just uploaded a recording of your CQ when you were running around 10 dB
over my noise floor, and here is the youtube link to the recording
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF10bDQFowU&feature=youtu.be

73,
Don (wd8dsb)

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 4:28 AM, cqtestk4xs--- via Topband <
topband at contesting.com> wrote:

>
> First, I want to say thank you to all who responded to my post about a top
> loaded vertical for 160.
>
> The antenna I wound up with was quite different than the one I proposed.
> Basically, it is about 132 feet of wire.  The top  "bent" part (65 feet) is
> carried by a  piece of thin Phillystran stretched out from the 84 foot
> level on my tower out to around 350 feet to a "borrowed" neighbors
> property.  Luckily the property also rises in slope about 25 feet, giving
> me a little extra height.  The remaining 67 feet is dropped straight down
> to the ground.   I currently have around 40 radials laying on the ground,
> not buried yet. Another 20 or so to come.  Some of the radials from the 160
> vertical overlap the ones from my 4 square for 80
>
>
> The antenna is directly fed with 50 ohm cable and the SWR   is 1:1 at 1825
> and is less than 1.3:1 across 1800-1900 kHz.  It looks into the tower in
> the direction of North America.
>
> I gave the antenna its first workout tonight and it is a winner.  Worked
> all over the US and had about ten EU call in.  Copy was tough on this end
> as QRN was quite bad on the shared apex rx antenna.
>
> Thanks  again to all who helped me find a solution to my 160 antenna.
>
> Bill KH7XS/K4XS
> _________________
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>