Not a total loss

Yesterday, I had my weekly Skype session with Bob W3BBO. One of things that came up in our weekly yak-fest was that Bob discovered that his GADS antenna (Gutters And Downspouts) will load up on 160 Meters. In fact, I have W3BBO loaded into my HamAlert app, and when he was CQing Friday night, I received an alert. We agreed that we would try and hook up on 160 Meters last night.

Sure enough around 0000 UTC, my phone let me know Bob was on the air. I hurriedly finished my burger and ventured down into the shack. I twiddled in the frequency where Bob was reported, 1.8265 MHz, and sure enough, I heard him. He was only about 539 to 549, but was completely readable.

I tuned up the W3EDP, and turned up the power for once, because Bob told me he would be running around 75 Watts, so I did the same. The KX3 matched the wire, but as soon as I keyed up, the KX3 shut down. I powered it back on, only to have the same result again.

This time,  I tuned up the HF9V, which is not the greatest alternative, as it is very inefficient on 160 Meters. I called Bob several times, only to have him call CQ in my face. He wasn't hearing me, which didn't surprise me, but "rats!", just the same.

I went down the band a bit and called CQ several times to see where RBN would hear me, and I was actually getting out better than I expected, despite the HF9V's inefficiency.  My CQ was answered Craig W2NTN, and we chewed the rag for about 20 minutes. Actually, we probably could have just shouted at each other as Craig lives in Scotch Plains, the next town down the road.

The W3EDP has worked for me before on 160 meters, but this was the first time that I ever tried using it at a power level higher than 5 Watts. My thinking is that despite the ferrites that I have on the coax, too much RF must be coming back down the line and the KX3 goes into self protection mode. I am going to improve my ground connection, and I'm pretty sure that will solve my problem, even though at my usual 5 Watt level, everything is hunky-dory.

To quell my disappointment of not being able to work Bob, I tuned around the bands hoping to work a few stations in order to salve my open wound. And as fortune would have it, I walked away with three big scores.

I worked Dave AB9CA, who was doing a POTA activation in Mississippi on 40 Meters. Then on 20 Meters, I scored two more big fish, nabbing these two ATNO's:

So in all, it turned out to be a nice evening despite my failure to work W3BBO on 160 Meters.  I think that once I resolve that RFI problem, we'll be able to hook up sometime in the near future.

72 de Larry W2LJ 

QRP - When you care to send the very least!