Topband: thr rest of the n7df story

[N7DF]

 In my younger days I was anavid contester and especially welcomed the  challengeof 160 meters   This was mostly the     result of acquiringseveral Collins   273W-1X antennas on a military surplus sale  which proved to be outstanding low  band    antennas after some minor modifications    Over the years I accumulated   towers and antennas to put together a serious   contest station  But my military   assignments prevented anything permanentuntil my retirement  I found a nice   little   acreage in the Sacramento Mountains ofsouth central New Mexico but it   unfortunatelyhad a lot of RFI from a 1950s era     power grid     Even so I put up   some antennas   and  got on the air  After my brother K0HGW joined me in  retirement we    bought a 140 acre tract of landin the     Tularosa Basin that was   4 miles from the nearest power lines  The RFI noise   level was essentially zero and   we  startedbuilding our contest station   Weinstalled one of the Collins antennas   and a 3    wavelength  beverage aimed at Europe  Then I had a stroke and my   brother was killed in a car wreck and thatended the    contest station antenna   building     I partially recovered from the stroke but haveresigned myself to just   entering CW     contests  since I now have a speechimpediment from the stroke       In fact my  neurologist tells me that this is very good     for my recovery from the stroke       Ispend most of my time on 160 with one of the Collins antennas from   my QTH in the     mountains      Ihave been trying to get around the noise problems   with a lot of cooperation from the electriccooperative     and various types of receiving arrays but it still gets up over S9a lot of the time           OK  -  so the   reason for this     narrative is that I haveseveral towers and antennas that would   makea pretty respectable contest station and I am willing    to donate them to any   groupthat will come get them  and put them touse  This includes two of the   Collins antennas that    are worth $30,000 each        Ifanyone is interested they can    contactme at n7df at yahoo.com for details