Nerd has Never Been so Cool
Excited by the possibility of adding to my DX worked totals on 80M during the ARRL DX CW contest a few week-ends ago, I hurriedly installed a new 80M ground plane (GP) antenna. Like the year before, I intended a single-band effort and the new GP was going to be my secret weapon.
Posted in Antenna, Construction, Contesting, Model.
– 7 March 10
I have been playing with HFTA software from the ARRL Antenna Book to determine the typical take-off angles needed to communicate to DX locales. First step was to develop my elevation profile, which I did based upon the instructions included using a program named MicroDEM. While not the most intuitive thing in the world, I did manage to follow the Antenna Book directions to obtain my DEM GIS file from a government location and to create exportable FAN files needed for HFTA. A FAN file is a terrain height profile in a particular direction from my QTH “tower” location.
– 6 March 10
One of the hams on my twitter feed, Dan YO3IBW posed a question asking if he should run a delta loop for 40M. Dan’s antennas are situated on the top of his apartment building in Bucharest. The base of his mast is situated at about 30M above street level, with antenna firing E/W. I decided I would model several antenna scenarios to help illustrate Dan’s options.
– 31 October 09
