On Jan 27, 2008, at 13:08 , nu7t wrote:

> Fellow Radiators:
>
> The CQ 160m contest is over.

Gee, it's only about 2000Z here. Still about four hours to go in the
contest. I figure to get another 2 and a half hours of operation or so
as it gets closer to sunset. You're about three hours west of me (I'm
in Ohio), so you're right, you're probably out of darkness for the
rest of the contest period...:-)

> I used the 160m helical. About 70' (21
> meters) of house wire wound around a 10' tall and 1 1/2 " (3.8cm)
> diameter plastic pipe. From the top of the pipe 70' more of wire was
> strung across the yard and garden never more than 3 meters high.
> Under the plastic pipe were 4 radials ( a couple at 10m and a
> couple at 20m long) winding around the yard and garden. The radials
> were buried under snow.

For comparison, my vertical is using a 20-foot (slightly over 6 meter)
piece of 2.5-inch (6.35 centimeter) PVC tubing, wound with about 260
feet (about 80 meters) of number 12 insulated wire with three 18-foot
(5.5-meter) wires extending out from the top for a capacitance hat,
ground-mounted over 54 radials reaching to the property lines, lengths
ranging from 45 feet (13 meters) to 130 feet (40 meters).

>
> Running at 5 watts, the antenna covered a radius of 800km with
> several contacts out to 1000km. Please remember, these contacts were
> with real contest stations. I tried increasing power to make contacts
> further away, but to no avail.
> I heard stations as distant as 3200km.
> This is fun

I'm running 500 watts; so far I've worked 46 US states (missing
Wyoming and North Dakota; Alaska and Hawaii are "countries" in this
contest) and 36 countries. best distances from here seem to be OM, HA
and 9A contacts, all around 4600 miles (about 7400 kilometers). The
Hawaiian contact is about the same distance in the other direction.

I've been very happy with the performance of the helical vertical this
160-meter season; it's done a very good job on my relatively small
city lot.

73,


John Bastin K8AJS
bastinj@...