[TowerTalk] Topband: 160 vertical advice

Don Kirk wd8dsb at gmail.com
Mon Feb 12 17:36:58 EST 2018


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
> _________________
> Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
>


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