Hi Guys,
Yesterday I wanted to activate Mt Muggio I/LO-182 on low bands using the efhw with loadcoil for 160mt.
some details about used antenna:
On the web it’s possible to find a 80-10mt loaded efhw antenna, it consists in 1/2lambda for 7mhz + a load coil to 110uH and abt 2mt for adjust the risonance on 3.6 Mhz.
I recalculate the value of loadcoil considering 1/2lambda for 3.6Mhz and 5 meters for adjust the risonance on 1.830mhz
According to my calculations it is necessary a coil with value of abt 225uH.
I used a ⌀40mm pvc pipe for winding support and an enameled copper wire awg38 for maximize the size and lightness; in theory with this parameters it’s necessary 85 turns to obtain the desidered value.
In this way I will able to fix this long wire on telescopic poles without burden on them; on the down side using a tiny wires the resistive component increases worsening the performance.
The completed antenna consists in a 42 meters wire awg26 (diameter 0.3mm with teflon jacket) + a coil abt 85 turns on diameter 40mm (adjusted for 226uH) + 5 meters wire awg26.
For feeding this antenna I realized a multi-output trasformer 1:4 1:9 1:16 with ft140-77 material optimized for frequency below 10Mhz.
Saturday afternoon I added an Alert for 17:30utc on sotawatch
I left home at 15:45 utc, Zac and me reached Alpe Giumello by car, we climbed up along step field heading directly to the top.
I spent some minutes to unroll the long antenna and fix it on two telescopic pole one of 10mt and the other of 4.5mt.
Feeding the antenna with 1:16 opteining a better signals.
I selfspoted on sotawatch and I called CQ on 3.555 cw dispite of decent numbers of spot on RBN it wasn’t a great success.
passing on 160 I realized that it was in progress IARU HF contest, I managed a qso with italian contester.
I returned in 80 and I made a qso with a first sota chaser OK2PDT Jan I continued to call without success.
I started to call cq on 1.835 cw at 18:10 using 10watts I managed two qsos with sota chasers OE7HPI Holger and IU2IJW Martino.
I passed on 20mt but the band was full of contester so I decided to look for some qso in 17 meters getting only one qso with Luca IW2OGY Luca.
I conclused with a qso in 160mt ssb after that I passed in qrt.
Lake of Como and Lake of Lugano
Mt Legnone
The way to return
Thanks at All
73