To All from PA0SE
Des, M0AYF, wrote:
Greetings all,
Further to my posting a few weeks ago requesting advice on antennas I am
happy to report success. Taking advantage of the recent dry settled wx I
finished the antenna. My final choice was a 10 mtr vertical with 3 x 7 mtr
horizontal wires. This was the option I was advised would be most
effective.
This was also my preferred option too and in a sense was forced upon me by
practical considerations. My loading coil had no more room for extra turns
and the 10 mtr vertical plus 3 x 7 mtr horizontal wires just came into
resonance at abt 137 kHz. This pleased me since the resistance of the coil
was already up to 15 Ohms and I did not wish to add to it. Final "tweaking"
was achieved by dangling an old toroidal ring inside the coil former. I
should explain that my remotely tuned variometer will only tune over 1KHz
so
the antenna needs to be close to resonance to start with.
Today (Thursday afternoon) I was doing some wet/dry test to see how the
antenna tuning alters from dry to wet. The past few days have been dry but
today we had a solid 5 hrs rain so it was ideal to test the "wet"
condition.
Happily it only changes by about 300 Hz. Since all appeared to be ok I
decided to put some "real power" to the antenna and check for insulation
failure etc. Again all was well with about 10 Watts. Next I turned the
power
up to my present limit (about 30W) and again all was well. This seemed a
good time of day to do such tests as no one would be operating due to the
elevated levels of qrn/qrm. To my surprise I heard (over the qrm) a number
of "key down" notes, working on the assumption that "if you can hear them,
you can work em" theory I put out a cq call which was promptly answered by
John (G4GVC) with a huge signal. Even with my lossy 3 stage BPF and a 2k5
pot attenuate Johns signal was easy copy. John gave me a 578 report which
delighted me, its one thing to have amp meters "kicking" and SWR bridges
telling me the match is ok but to have a "real" contact is much more
convincing and makes all those hours of effort worth while. Someone
described the operation on LF as "being the most exciting in years of
operating". I totally agree and look forward to many more contacts on LF.
I do not know if John is on this reflector but if so "Thanks John" for my
first qso on LF. Just after that qso local qrm went sky-high as my two sons
came home from school and fired up the Playstation so no more contacts
possible today. If the wx permits I intend to be on-air again most mornings
next week from Tuesday morning onwards so if any of you hear a weak M0AYF
calling cq please give me a call.
Sorry to drag this out but I wanted to thank all those on this list for
their help and advice in the past and I felt the best way to do that was to
share my success with you all.
Dear Des,
A delightful story Des that I certainly enjoyed very much!
I hope LF will bring you many contacts and am looking forward to our first
QSO.
Your story also brought back happy memories of my own start on 2 km.
August 24 last year I had completed my transmitter and did some testing
around 1800 hrs UTC. Power had to be limited to about 70 watts because the
tuning capacitor over the loading coil sparked over (now replaced by a
vacuum one). Some amateurs in a town nearby listened for my signal and
reported back via 2 m. Then PA0KSB (now a silent key) told me I was being
called. And indeed, there was Peter, G3LDO! A fine QSO followed. Peter gave
me RST549 and I received him at 459. With this first QSO on LF over 376 km
Peter certainly made my day!
The following weekend I did some beaconing and received 20 listener
reports by telephone from Germany, Belgium, UK and all over my own country.
From then on I was firmly hooked!
73, Dick, PA0SE
JO22GD
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