Topband: Wednesday 160m DX CW Activity Night

[David Olean]

Hello Roger,

You had a great signal last night. At one point you called CQ and I 
answered with 5 watts, but you did not hear me. I did work I think two 
stations while running 5 watts here. One was HA0NAR. This morning was a 
big ZERO. I was up at 1000 UT and called CQ but had no QSOs and heard no 
DX. I did go and check out FT-8. RA0FF and RA0CY were both on FT8 as 
were  afew KL7 stations.  That was a bit of a bummer for me.

I am having a problem with creeping SWR that climbs up to over 2:1 if I 
am doing a lot of QRO calling.  At first, I thought it was my really bad 
temporary installation with a vise clamp holding the N connector bracket 
to the tower base and the series doorknob capacitor sitting out in the 
weather and snow. During the Stew, the SWR got so high I had to go out 
and shovel the snow and ice away from it.  I figured the snow and water 
was making the SWR bad. I built a suitable wx proof enclosure with a 
nice porcelain insulator and the type N connector input, but the heating 
is more pronounced. Apparently the ice was keeping the cap cooler! So 
now I am looking for another cap that will not overheat.

On 1/9/2020 9:56 PM, Roger Kennedy wrote:
> Well sadly conditions were rather poor last night . . .
>
> Also I wasn't sure how many stations made it on the band, as I had
> torrential rain all night, and with the 400kV power lines a mile away that
> caused a high noise level, so could only copy stations above S7.
>
> Oh well . . . perhaps it will be better next Wednesday !
>
> 73 Roger G3YRO
>
>
> _________________
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