After quite a few months, I'm finally back on the air from the house. I fired up the HF and satellite rigs about 10 days ago and miraculously everything worked! Sad to say I don't think I had powered up the HF rig in more than 6 months. I made quite a few contacts and qso's on satellite, working some old friends and making some new ones. I did work the Netherlands on FO-29. That was a nice surprise on a 12 degree pass! This week I have been getting the HF side of the station in order in preparation for the ARRL DX Contest this weekend.
The best news was with the Zero-Five. I replaced some radials that were damaged when I had trees removed last summer and added a bunch more and so far I'm very very impressed with the way the antenna is working. I still have more to lay out and then get tacked down in the next few weeks but today I worked Croatia (20 Meters) and the Canary Islands(17 Meters) very easily only having to call twice. Signals seem to be running about 3-4 S-units higher than my Inverted Vee. I can only imagine that it will get better as I finish laying all this wire across the yard.
1 comment:
Glad to see others using the Zero Five, I have had mine about 2 years and love it. Do others look at it and tell you it won't work? I get that all the time but it amazes me at the DX I work off the ZeroFive. I have 75 radials under mine (3500 feet of 12 gauge wire). Pix of it on my site kk3q.net. Great post!
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