cqww 160m cw

The contest was fun, many new stations worked.
Just going around the band working every station, they are so close! Sometimes 5-6-7 stations on 1 Kc, with my filter @ 200 Hz it still was sometimes difficult to distinguish the call.
But ears have the possibility to focus on a tone and get the call+report while another station is just 50 Hz up or down.

Results:

Band      QSOs    Pts  States  Country
Total     374    2197   32        62
Score: about 206.518

I did manage to score some nice DX:

KL7RA Alaska
XE1RCS Mexico
PJ2T Neth. Antilles
C6ANM Bahamas
VP9/N1SNB Bermuda
USA: about 30 stations worked, about 28 states including Arizona & Texas
VE: about 10 stations.

Some nice calls
P33W Cyprus
TF3CW Iceland
4Z5J Israel
ZC4LI UK Cyprus Base

I did not use the beverage. As a matter of fact I’m rather dissapointed in the performance of the beverage. Signals are down from the inverted-L about 2 S-points. Noise is also down (of course).
I tried to find out at daylight if something was wrong but nothing and the next night same results. So worked al DX on the inverted-L 🙂

However I had good result on 40m with the beverage. I managed to work the S21DX expedition in the huge qrm on 40m, by using the beverage. QRM went down significantly.

Maybe my external receiver port in the trx (TS-2000) is deaf? Some work to do…

Next contest PACC.

inverted L

Last week erected my Inverted-L based on a spider flexpole, 14m high.
After some troubles it worked ok, wire is thin alu about 40m.

I was lucky no cutting necessary, SWR was 1:1 easy with the tuner of my PA.

Worked ZD8!, E44, TS (3V) with clear signals. Heard W9 and VE9DX.

I moved the beverage out of the field and nailed it to the trees along the Stenhorstdijk.
The road is East/West.
Had to cross a local stream, and an entrance of the local farmer daily feeding his cattle.
But easy no poles in the frozen ground 🙂

I did not end with a 450 ohm resistor to earth, because I want to work/hear USA/VE also (= west).

Inverted L 14 meter high

beverage

beverage 2

Experimenting with Beverages

Thanks to Johan PE9DX I have some beverages for 160m and can try them out.

I did work on 160m some qso in the Steve Perry contest but real DX was not heard on this side.

And tx was difficult, I used a PKW All Rad vertical (9m, no radials). With 600W I was not heard in de USSR, so were the power was going I don’t know. Sold the antenne allready, must make a Inverted L thats the best but needs a lot of radials. Work to do

The beverage was put in the field next to my neighbor. Wanted to go 45 degrees (JA) but after 220m I was near the walking path which goed along the local stream so had to stop @ 220m.

But it works OK, heard XU7ACY yesterday evening with 559 clear signals.

Beverage about 45 degrees, 220m long