[TowerTalk] 160m OCF etc

[David Blake]

Last October I put up a 160M OCF and could not be happier.  I consider myself a
serious DXer on a budget.  Over the past 58 years I have tried a lot of antennas and
for the low bands this is the best so far for me.  Until now I have never had any tower
higher than 48 feet.  No SteppIRs, etc.   I have this OCF at 70 feet fed with 200 feet
of LMR400.


DXCC challenge now at 2727 with the ARRL.  278 DXCC on 80M and even though
I'm sort of a newbie I have 150 on 160M.  My bucket list includes working 300 on
80/75 meters and I see the light at the end of the tunnel using an OCF.


Last season I used the OCF for both transmit and receive, I'm hopeful that by next
season I can put up a 2nd antenna 90 degrees turn from the 1st one.  Total 352 DXCC
mixed.  DXCC Honor Roll CW and Phone and over 300 on digital modes.

I do run high power and have no RFI issues contrary to some naysayers.  YRMV as
they say.  But it's really all about doing the best you can do with what you have.  Have
fun and work some new ones!!

73
Dave -N4DB-



________________________________
 From: "john at kk9a.com" <john at kk9a.com>
To: towertalk at contesting.com 
Sent: Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:22 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] 160m OCF etc
 

There are always other options. With a 51' high support you could put up a
shortened vertical or an Inverted L and have a pretty good top band
antenna.


To:     towertalk <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] 160m OCF etc
From:     r miles <greenacres113 at charter.net>
Date:     Wed, 5 Jun 2013 08:23:23 -0400 (EDT)


I won't try to comment on the theory of the engineers. I can just speak of
my personal experience with one. Because of the location of the center
support I had to try an OCF. My short side actually sloped a bit. I simply
put a half wave long 160m OCF with the peak height of 51'. 50 ohm coax to
a 4:1 balun at the feed point. It was no world beater but in 3 yr.s
running 500w I did work 127 DXCC entities. In 54 yr.s in the hobby I still
tell new OPs: try it. If you are limited by whatever reason give your
antenna thoughts a real world try. Don't let the nay sayers put you off.
Put up what you can & see if it works. We are experimenters. That's why we
are called amateur operators. One of the new hams in our club lives in an
apartment. He's playing with a very small loop on HF. In the last few
months he's wrkd about a dozen entities. Not too bad. He put up something
& gave it a try.
Every antenna we consider standard started life as an experiment....

K9IL

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