Dreaming of a real antenna for 160M

Just decided to throw in the towel for the CQ WW 160M CW con­test. I guess I should be happy with my attempt…part-time net­ted 29 states and 1 province, no other DX. I am still using the lit­tle G5RV, up 10M in the tree, unable to tune but rig not com­plain­ing that much with an SWR of 5:1. I am not sure what my effec­tive radi­ated power would cal­cu­late, but with 100 watts to the low antenna I am quite quiet.

The band was quite noisy, and as such I could only con­tact the very loud­est of sta­tions. I was hear­ing plenty of Europe sta­tions tonight (and AK/​HI last night albeit very faintly), so prop­a­ga­tion was fine around EU sun­rise. I just don’t have the grunt to get much past the 4 call area.

Too many peo­ple were inter­pret­ting my call as MF7T, hop­ing me to be elu­sive low-​band DX!

Plans under­way for a Mar­coni and as much wire as I can get into a radial field in my sub­ur­ban back garden.