This time on 80 Meters. Subbing for Steve WX2S again. The problem is that I have to work late tonight. I'll be home in time for the Hunt, but I know right now that I'd rather be in bed than on the radio. Wired or not, I don't think I'll have trouble falling asleep tonight. Just hope I don't fall asleep at the key tonight when the pileups dwindle and I start calling CQ Fox on simplex.
Just a final word about Tuesday night's 40 Meter Hunt. I ended up with 51 QSOs, Tim KR0U had somewhere around 75. Slight difference there, eh? Maybe Tim being smack dab in the middle of the country had something to do with it. More likely is the fact that he's a superb op and that I'm just a "ham and egg'er" way out of my league.
On another topic, after I replaced the stub and matching coil on the HF9V, it remained kind of deaf. I went out to the backyard again this past Saturday, and undid the tape covering the stub/coax connection. Everything looked kosher, but I brought along two wrenches and "gently" tightened the connection better than I was able to do with just my hands alone. The bottom line is that the problem is solved. The HF9V is just as loud as the wire. In fact, during the 40 Meter hunt this past Tuesday night, I was switching back and forth between the two. Neither seemed to have an advantage over the other. The HF9V has always been a better player for me for nabbing DX on 20 Meters and higher.
A funny thing about this whole HF9V episode, which deserves a little recap. As I've said before, I discovered that I had a problem after the landscapers left when I switched to the HF9V and signals were way, way down. Going out to the backyard, I then saw that the matching stub had been chewed up by their weedwhackers. Looking back on it, the weak signals that I was hearing were not coming from the antenna, but were being picked up by the coax! So when you read that the feedline is part of the antenna system - there's nothing that brings that home better than the incident that I went through. Some 125 feet of coax sitting anywhere from 2 - 4 feet of the ground was picking up HF signals. Not very well, but was still picking them up.
Last thing on my mind this morning as I blather on. I think we can safely say that the warm weather is behind us for the year. I awoke to 34F (1C) this morning, and when I got to work which is a good 20 or so miles farther inland from the coast than South Plainfield, the temperature here was 29F (-2C). It's quite easy, for me at least, to see how being closer to the Atlantic, even by a few miles ,affects the temperatures and the weather. If it were to start precipitating this instant, it would probably be snowing here and raining at home.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
No comments:
Post a Comment