Last year my one good strategy was to treat WPX as a domestic contest. From this local it means hitting 40M/80M pretty hard. That said, it is nice to pick up the 6‑pointers (DX QSOs, off-continent) and EU on 40M is quite easy from my station. This year I decided to modify my strategy to capitalize on …
Suffered through July recovering from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (footnote: don’t get this unless you have a month to waste feeling absolutely miserable and enjoy massive doses of antibiotics). My extremely low energy level has kept me from the radio. Haven’t felt like contesting much. Skipped WAE CW, missed three sessions of Thursday Madness, had work commitment …
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.
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 …
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 …