Worked Dave MM0ALM last night (11th Nov) at 22.00 UTC for the first time on
136.90Khz and exchanged 559 reports both ways despite high levels of QRN.
When he first called CQ at around 22.10 his signals were RST439 but
gradually improved during the QSO. The distance is 670Km. (Thanks to Rik,
ON7YD for your signal reports of that QSO posted on the reflector )
Yesterday I reluctantly sacrificed over 2metres off the top of a mature
willow tree which is almost immediately under the main span of the 3-wire
top loading of the LF antenna and which had grown to about 35ft high and
about the same in diameter of the crown. It looked very attractive but it
had grown so much that some of the fronds almost touched the antenna wire
and had it had now begun to dominate one part of the garden. The vertical
clearance between the wire and the top of the tree after pruning is now
about 10 to 12 ft . The tree surgeon also cut back another tree which had
also grown close to the horizontal wire and also fairly close to the
vertical section. The antenna current has now increased significantly by
around 20 % (to 2.3A with 300W RF) which seems to confirm a previous
report recently posted on the reflector ( I think from Mike G3XDV) of
increased antenna current after cutting back foliage close to the antenna.
- It remains to see what the effect on the signal !!.
I am also in the process of increasing the height of the end supports of
the antenna in the near future so that the vertical section will be
increased in length by about 12ft from 36ft to 48 ft and it will be
interesting to see what effect that has on the signal.
73 Derek G3GRO ( Crawley, West Sussex IO91VC)
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