[VHFcontesting] September ideas, 1 sensible 1 crazy?

[nosigma at aol.com]

For June I work with W4IY so that gives me quite a bit of time to plan for September.  I plan on adding 1296 as part of the morphasis to SOLP but will probably enter FM Only again and work SSB on 6m, 2m & 70cm & 1296 when fm is slow (usually).

On FM my strength has been multipliers.  From central VA terrain dictates that if I want more grids I have to work NNE or SSE along a narrow azimuth either way reaching out from my reasonably predictable max range of 200 miles to 250 to 275 miles either direction.

This would require 10 to 12 dB more gain on 2m over the advertised 14 dBi my 2m beam has.  Since I would be working along fixed bearings due to terrain a rope Yagi seems to be a natural.  Reading up on the Brendanquest rope Yagi, which is well inside my fab skills, I think a little tweak to the center frequency and a few runs on eznec to dial in the Vpol beam widths would give me what I need to reach from FM08 to at least the FN10-11-20-21 grid corner if not a well into those more distant grids.  

FYI: I cant handle quad stacks on my Jeep mast and my max boom length is 12 foot for that mast. 

I want to push the edge of the FM envelope out a little further....

Comments?  Crazy? Problems?
Criticism always welcome.

73
John
KM4KMU



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