[UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW QRP 7MHz

[Gordon Brown]

I guess we are all looking at ways of improving our signal and I was so 
impressed by the GM3YEH QRP score that I thought I would have a look at the half 
square antenna he uses.  It seems to be a pair of top fed quarter wave verticals 
fed in phase and some people claim it gives up to 4dB gain over a dipole at low 
radiation angles.  My next step was to see how Barry's signal compared to mine 
on the air and I used reverse skimmer to get the following results -
Rx Stn       Tx Stn         freq                    S/N        speed        
time     date
ES5PC     GM3YEH     7012.6    CQ     23 dB     25 wpm     1048     28
ES5PC     G1N             7010.0    CQ     24 dB     25 wpm     1050     28
DL2CC    GM3YEH     7012.7    CQ     20 dB     26 wpm     1051     28
DL2CC    G1N             7010.1    CQ     26 dB     25 wpm     1052     28
ES5PC     GM3YEH     7012.7    CQ     14 dB     25 wpm     1059     28
ES5PC     G1N             7010.0    CQ     24 dB     25 wpm     1100     28
 
These were the only anywhere near meaningful comparisons I could find 
I was running 110 watts to a dipole which should give me about 16dB over 5 watts 
and give him 4dB with the half square over my dipole making an overall 
difference of 12 dB in my favour.  I guess I don't have enough information to 
allow for the different paths but it looks like the GM3YEH half square is much 
better than I thought it was.
73
Gordon.
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "GM3YEH" <gm3yeh at googlemail.com>
To: <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 8:57 PM
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW QRP 7MHz


> I've never been much of a QRP fan, but I decided to give it a go for the
> 2010 RSGB 80m sprint series and was astonished with the results.  This
> encouraged me to think about a QRP effort for this year's CQWW CW.  I only
> use wire antennas and can just get one up in my garden at a time so I
> decided on something with a bit of gain for a single band 40m entry.  A 
> half
> square was decided on with main lobes towards the east and west. I got it 
> up
> and tested just before the snow started.  One of the most impressive 
> things
> I noticed over the weekend was the high proportion of Ws who managed to 
> copy
> my tiny wee 5W signal on the first call - lots of those guys have really
> great ears.  A lot of time was spent on repeats and my callsign was
> regularly mis-copied as GM3YES - which is a real pain in the neck after 
> the
> other guy gives his TU and I need to call him again with the correction.
> Although I probably wouldn't be patient enough to use QRP all the time, it
> was a nice change - especially getting into VK!  I didn't work GM or GI.
>
> Points    - 127,568
> QSOs    -  721
> Zones    -  21
> Countries - 91
>
> 73 de Barry GM3YEH.
> _______________________________________________
> UK-Contest mailing list
> UK-Contest at contesting.com
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