[TowerTalk] Antennas, and other gear, that work

[K8RI]

On 6/5/2013 12:55 PM, Larry Loen wrote:
> Well, once you "hit the wall" at maybe 150 countries or so, (or don't get
> the contest scores you want), you start to raise your standards.  That
> inevitably increases your contact with theory and overrules past practice.
> "Not working" is always relative, it seems.

Working good or poor has always been relative.  We had a thunder storm 
building so I grounded the antenna input to the copper water pipes in 
the heating system. Station as in the basement and the pipes were a 
short reach.  I was still hearing signals on 20.  Worked a station out 
in the mid Pacific on 20 with a 100 watts from my HT37.

This would have been in 61.


>
> For instance, I once put up a basic Butternut 5 band vertical with a
> whopping four buried radials.  It actually worked "well enough" on
> 40/20/15/10 to get me to maybe 200 countries.  I even worked South Sandwich
> on 40 meters with that setup.
>
> But, my results on 80 were really terrible and remained that way until I
> put down the 64 radials recommended in "Low Band DXing", which I hadn't
> done.  Suddenly, I was doing stuff on 80 that I never did before.  I was
> able to achieve more on 40, too, when I did what, you know, theory demanded.

It's amazing how suddenly our great performing antenna suddeny doesn't 
look as good as it did before the improvements.

>
> I think most of us have a similar learning curve, except maybe we forget
> what we learned and why; once learned, you tend to "just do it" in your
> future endeavors.
>
> It works the other direction, too.  Now that I have that tower at 65 feet,
> the results I'm having there throws a retroactive light on what I used to
> be able to do and would color my efforts were I to decide to rely on wire
> antennas again.

There are those who have worked WAS and DXCC on a simple antenna from an 
apartment, but that is a combination of skill and luck.

Of course once you've had the big antennas and a few towers while 
running QRO and have to go back to a wire antenna driven bry a 
transceiver through a tuner it can be quite a let down.

As you get older and can no longer do your own antenna work, simpler 
does gain some strong positives.

73

Roger (K8RI)


>
>
>




> Larry Wo0Z
>
> On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 7:50 AM, GEO Badger <w3ab at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> As pointed out by others here, we put up many antennas and used cheap, err
>> inexpensive, gear and made lots of contacts and we didn't know our set-ups
>> wouldn't work. Now we know they won't work.
>>
>> Why?
>>
>>
>> ---
>>    Ciao baby, catch you on the flip side.
>>      GEO
>>        http://www.w3ab.org
>>
>> "There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this
>> line." - Oscar Levant
>> _______________________________________________
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