If I may I should like to ask one very important and practical question, is
it possible to make contacts effectively at 160 kHz with a proposed antenna
which would only be about 25 feet high and about 50 foot long (horizontal
wire or "T" resonated against ground) as this is about as much as I could
ever manage within the garden of my town semi. In other words are there any
operators on the list who are currently working with an antenna system with
these sort of dimensions. If so I would very much like to hear from you. I
would sooner find out now if my proposed antenna is totally impractical for
this wavelength rather than much later on after building up the other
components of an LF station.
The band here is 137kHz not 160 kHz - that is the frequency the USA Lowfers have
For some months I held the UK distance records for both 73kHz and 137 kHz
using a Marconi tee antenna just 7m high with a top span of three wires of
15m. (I think these are roughly equivalent to those American or
olde-English 'feet' units of measure you refer to).
This size of antenna, fed with 200 Watts or so is more than capable of
working up and down the country unless noise levels are particularly high.
If you use narrowband techniques there is no reason why European contacts
won't be possible
Andy G4JNT
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