ARROW Communications Association

Since I reconnected the coax to it, my vertical dipole - a tribander driven element hung from a high tree branch - has still not seemed to work well. I would switch back and forth between it and my 20/40/80 horizontal fan dipole, and the horizontal was always at least an S-unit better. In the WPX SSB contest the vertical dipole was only better when the signal came from directly off the end of the horizontal dipole, and I began to think I had water in the coax.

As of May 2008 I have successfully topped 10,000 QSOs in only 6 years running 5 watts maximum on HF and using only wires and verticals. I haven't done the stats, but probably 96%+ of that was in contests, which involves another goal - to score among the top ten nationally in the QRP category, and I have done that at least once and maybe several times (CQ scores take a year to compute, ARRL scores a bit less) ...

I have a file tracking such things ... time to take another look at it. So far:
I was 9th QRP/single-op in the US in CQWW DX SSB 2005 after an 11th in 2004.

Actually, I can't answer that question, except to suggest that far-too-often Murphy is with us. (A curse I thought of in college, and a particularly bad one IMHO, is to wish someone "May Murphy be with you.") In any case, as the winter weather hit hard-hard-hard over the past 6-8 weeks, not only did my tribander driven element (tied vertically to a tree branch at least 60 feet up) finally reach complete deafness, but, suddenly, my HF9v multiband vertical (ground mounted) went deaf, too.

I am on cloud 9! My mail contained a large envelope from the ARRL containing a certificate awarding me 1st place, QRP division, in Michigan and 10th place, QRP division, in the U.S. in the 2007 ARRL International DX Phone Contest! I guess all that antenna work paid off. And that was before I did last Summer and Fall's improvements and additions. Now I'm wondering how I did in the 2007 Fall contests (I know I did at least as well as in '06 on most or all ...).

The Summer passed, and I never got around to building the fan vertical I described in episode 11. The 40/80 fan dipole languishes, coiled up in a box in the basement. I keep thinking about putting it up, and may yet ... perhaps as an NVIS antenna. But I still wasn't satisfied!

Well, with the new fan dipole built for 40 and 80m, I was ready to put it up. It looked pretty sturdy, and I felt I would be able to get it up in the air SOMEHOW.

The WPX CW contest has been much on my mind since the late Fall contests. This one is a personal favorite. But what about that big horizontal loop I've wanted so badly? I REALLY wanted to get it up before the contest.

Now to consider the antennas again.

The 10-15-20 dipole I suspended in a tree last Fall had become very lossy, and I suspected water in the coax. In fact, it had become quite deaf, so I lowered it down to the ground (with difficulty, as both the rope and the feedline were tangled in tree branches by the winds of Winter). As it turned out, the reason it was deaf was that the tree had snapped the center conductor connection, tearing the wire from its ring lug. No wonder it wasn't hearing very well any more ...

March 30, 2007
Finally, the ice storms etc. seem to be over, but now the thunderstorms are appearing, turning my thoughts to lightning protection.

After reading, and reading, and reading, from everything from the Polyphaser documentation on the web to forum entries about the topic at eHam.net, I felt ready to get this part of the project started. I was also becoming very nervous about the increasing frequency of thunderstorm forecasts, and the fact that a few scattered storms had come near to my station over the past couple of weeks.

Big fun the other night. Tuning around 15m at 5:30PM after work, and hearing nothing but hiss, even with the preamp on. Then ... a very faint CW signal around 21028 ... I listened hard for about 10 minutes and got a "VK9" ... then finally assembled the full call: VK9DNX. They were working stations as fast as they could, but calling CQ from time to time, and not working many US stations at all. I called them about 6 times but was not being heard. So I broke down and dialed the rig up from its usual 5 watts to 100 watts -- they heard me on the first call and gave me the usual 599 report.

March 2, 2007

Nov. 7, 2007
The proof is in the pudding, and SSCW was the perfect place to find out just how the station would do with its three antennas - the HF9v with (now) 8 radials over 33' length, the dual band "fan" dipole on 15/40/80, and the low-swinging vertical dipole in the woods on 10/15/20.

The contest went better than I expected. I ran 5 watts from my Orion as always, and was able to switch between antennas using a combination of the front panel and an old rotary antenna switch.

Nov. 7, 2007

Nov. 7, 2007

Oct. 31, 2007
I was fired up again last night, with one antenna up, and ready to get into the next. I dug out a 500' roll of black 14 gauge THNN hookup wire and got busy.

Out in the driveway I pulled out two 67.5 foot lengths of the hookup wire. I got my soldering iron heating up in the garage, and used the point to make two holes each in three toothbrushes saved for the purpose - they make pretty good antenna insulators (and the birdies can brush their teeth while perched on the antenna).

Oct. 31, 2007
The weekend passed, with the contest going on somewhere up there in the ether, and Sunday afternoon I finally got around to putting up the first antenna - my old HF9v multi-band vertical.

Oct. 31, 2007
Last week, knowing the CQWWDXSSB contest was coming up fast, I scrambled to get my station on the air.
The first job was to make a cable entry, so I bought a 3.5" hole saw (~$30) to match some 3" PVC pipe (gosh, that stuff looks a lot bigger than 3.5" diameter). I bought a length of pipe and a 90 degree elbow to fit on the outside end of it.

Last night, unable to sleep, I wound up in front of the radio at 2AM. I got on 40m, but the band was almost dead, with an S5 QRN level. I figured something was up, propagation-wise, but was too tired to check the propagation sites, so I went down to 80m. Again, the band was pretty much dead, with just one or two QSOs, very local/regional, going on in the bottom 30 kHz. So I punched the button to go to 30m. The QRN was S1 there, but two scans up and down from 10.1 to 10.125 revealed nothing.

Then I slowed down my scan, narrowed the bandwidth to under 500 Hz, and listened harder. A faint signal around 10.107 turned out to be VK2GWK, who gradually got louder until he was a full S5. Then I tuned up the band a couple of kHz and found a ZL4 station as well. Both were not only working into the US, but the VK2 station worked an EA5, and I could hear both of them clearly (S5 or so), indicating a probable long path connection.

I am just hopping with excitement - I just got an envelope from the ARRL with a certificate in it. It reads: ARRL International Contest Award, 2004 ARRL International DX Contest, KT8K, Single Operator QRP, First Place CW, Michigan Section!!!
I was so excited it was a while later when I was telling a friend about it on the phone, and picked up the certificate to read it, that I realized there were TWO certificates!! The second one is for ARRL International DX Contest, Single Operator QRP, First Place Phone!!

I don't know ... maybe I was the only single-op QRP entry in Michigan, but it sure feels good. And I did SO much better in the recent CW Sweepstakes that I just sent in that log file, too. Maybe I will do that well again. Contests sure can be fun (though challenging).

I put up a loop a couple of months ago. I planned it to be a full wave on 80, with the wire running down the second floor eaves on both sides of the house and out to trees in the front and back yards. A big wind storm the next day (80 mph gusts near us) broke it, so I re-ran it around the eaves but only to a tree in the back yard. Now my MFJ analyzer says the fundamental is about 5 MHZ - a band I have no plans to ever use - but my Z11 autotuner tunes it well on 10 through 40 meters. I didn't have some RG8x handy, so I fed it with (get this!) 24 gauge clear-jacketed chee-e-ep speaker wire I had lying around. I mentioned it on eHam.net and a couple of the experts said it would be lossy because of the bad feedline, but .. you know what? Though performance was generally not as good as my Butternut HF9v or my triband vertical dipole at 20', in the 10 meter contest it outdid both the other antennas in every direction except West. In those directions it was 1-2 S units better than the vertical dipole (my best 10-15-20 antenna)! I ended up using it for most of the contest, switching back and forth frequently to check it out. It consistently did great.

Last year at the Dayton Hamfest I picked up a new radio, my first in many years, and the first to include the 30 meter band. My old 1978 Argonaut 509 has a number of design flaws, but I love so much about it, and this radio, an early-80's Tentec Argosy 525, was a small but substantial step up. I didn't have much money, and when I saw it on the table marked $200 I quickly talked the gentleman down to $180 and took it. On getting it home, of course, I found that it in many ways showed its age: the dial cord had been replaced but wound backward in such a way that the indicator moved the opposite direction it should have, one segment of the 10 meter band was dead, the VFO was unstable and made CW stations warble madly for seconds after the tuning knob was moved, etc., etc. But I was happy to have it, especially at such a low price.

(This is a copy of a response I made today in an eHam.net forum acknowledging elmers. I thought it was important enough to include here.)
I have had many, many elmers since before I got my novice license, from Spence Schubbe N8AP, who pushed me into studying for and taking the novice test in 1978, and Corwin Moore WB8UPM (and others) who encouraged me to look into ham radio before that, to Jim from Belleville whose call I've forgotten and whom I haven't seen in over 20 years, but who was my first on-air contact (3.5 miles distance on 15 meter novice-band CW) and who helped me build and debug my first keyer, an Accu-Keyer from the handbook, in his kitchen (etching the circuit board) and basement (figuring out where the errors were in the circuit diagram). Many other elmers, some of them not even hams, helped me learn about circuitry, antennas, swaps, operating, propagation, repeaters, etc. etc. etc., and I owe them all a great debt of gratitude.

When does shortening a dipole DECREASE the resonant frequency?

A couple of us have been working on putting an 80M dipole up at a club member's home, stringing the end support ropes through large trees. Our first attempt found me running out of line in my fishing pole, and my slingshot launches leaving a handful of large bolts hanging somewhere in the top areas of a large maple. We finally got the antenna up, but had to pull the dipole wire itself through the tree. The end of the wire was bent down at almost a 90 degree angle and reached almost to the ground.

The first annual ARROW tour bus to Dayton was a big success, and the hamfest itself was great as always. Though attendees did get a bit damp from the all-Saturday rain, their enthusiasm survived intact, and a great time and great deals were had by all.

Here's what it means when someone signs off from a CW QSO using "72"!

I've been reading and reading and reading, especially on the web, for the past year or 20, trying to figure out what kind of antenna would get me most efficiently onto 80M in my limited yardspace, AND be good on the most bands.
I have narrowed my search down to a few types - the open wire-fed doublet, the inverted-L vertical, and the horizontal loop. The doublet I can make from twin lead and feed with same. Using twin lead for the element will make it more visible than a single wire, but will broad band it a bit. I might have to use single wire, though, if I get any more worried about the reaction of my neighbors.

I was pleasantly surprised at recent swaps (Hazel Park, Marshall, Maumee) to see not only good to excellent attendance, but a wide variety of new and vintage transceivers and equipment, regular attendance by retail vendors, and lots of parts and literature available. The number of great solid state, all-band rigs selling for under $400 made me wish I was a novice again - I would have had a great radio to learn with. There were also plenty of test equipment and tool vendors to fuel the do-it-yourself crowd. Prices in general were very good, and deals abounded.

Never having made a blog entry (what does BLOG stand for anyway?) I am diving in, and, since this is an amateur radio site, I will mention that CW LIVES! LONG LIVE CW!
Those who try it ... LIKE IT.