Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Slow night.
20m, 30m, 40m and 80m pretty much dead. I sent CQs here and there but to no response.
What the heck, tuned 160m and there was a bit of activity. One guy calling CQ.
I answered back and got him on the second call. We both had mediocre signal reports so it was a two and out, but... that was my first CW QSO on 160m.
My antenna is a 1/4 wave inverted-u over a 70 foot oak tree. It's feedpoint is 6-8 feet off the ground and has a single tuned radial. It is fed with 450 ohm ladder line back to the shack window. Then in a 4:1 balun, a couple feet of coax and into the tuner.
It isn't pretty, and probably is really lousy, but it IS on the air.
So there! Pbbbt!
20m, 30m, 40m and 80m pretty much dead. I sent CQs here and there but to no response.
What the heck, tuned 160m and there was a bit of activity. One guy calling CQ.
I answered back and got him on the second call. We both had mediocre signal reports so it was a two and out, but... that was my first CW QSO on 160m.
My antenna is a 1/4 wave inverted-u over a 70 foot oak tree. It's feedpoint is 6-8 feet off the ground and has a single tuned radial. It is fed with 450 ohm ladder line back to the shack window. Then in a 4:1 balun, a couple feet of coax and into the tuner.
It isn't pretty, and probably is really lousy, but it IS on the air.
So there! Pbbbt!
