hi all,
yesterday i made another test on 160m. not planned but antenna works so well on 80 to 160m ;-). antenna was a 80 meter long wire from isolated 0,25mm wire between two trees as inv.L. at a height abt. 12m over ground. antenna direction was east-west. worked 6 chasers on top band and a lot more on 80m with good sigs and reports. on the higher bands antenna works also well with a few qrp qso´s to the mid-west us. included a nice s2s with K9EZ/p :-),and a qso on 20m with JA.at home again i looked at the antennas at JA4FKX…ok,no wonder i worked him…or he worked me
most times i use inv.L. antennas on top band, but never before without counterpoise/many radials. and this halfwave antenna worked very well.
tuned by my z-match without problems.
dx conds aren´t the best last evening, but some chasers called from W7…W6.
output 5watt on cw and 10watt on ssb…
In reply to DF2GN:
Hi Klaus,
Yr ant wks vry well!!! Nice sign in Holland. 160m was later in the evening open.
On 80m yr sign where very loud!! (SSB and CW).
OK yr worked JA4FKX hihi.
Tks fr the QSO’s. Nice work.
73, Sake PA0SKP
the next weeks i´m more on activations with the focus on DX / NA…etc…
so my antennas are more optimal on the higher bands or monoband antennas,so
maybe my 40m signal is a lot weaker in many comming activations or i´m only on the bands 20m up.
but i will also do again some 160/80/40m activations next time…then with much better antennas for these bands.
the why is, that in the last sunspot maximum i´m very busy with work and so i had no time to enjoy that. then a longer break in hamradio. and i´m only portable qrv, so i don´t will do every time the same :-)…after todays DM/BW-086 and DM/BW-082 activation 8148 sota qso´s are logged since 19.Feb ,and most of them on 40m.
and i really like the dx and new dxcc´s in the log. today CT3FT and LU5FC helped out to count DM/BW-082 as a multi in the 12m challenge and came back to my calls.
my goal till the end of the year is to go activating summits in every free time i have. i love it really
so some activations are shorter and maybe only from 17-12m at example. only for going out and play a bit with the radio and enjoy the walk/hike a shorter time due to limited time or bad wx.
but if my antenna ok for 40m and i have enough time i will call there for sure ! i write this because in the last activations i had seen some requests for qsy to 40m. but i had no antenna for that if i have one , i call also on 40m for eu chasers. lets see how my shorter antennas work on 40m the next time…maybe i take a little hf packer amp with me for the ssb part.
or better…call in at cw in qrs ;-)long time ago that i have replies to my qrs calls at the end of the pile ups…
mostly every time i post my antennas i use in the alert/spot i set up for upcomming activations. so you can think about before what bands are possible or not.
at the end of the next week i´m ready with my 12m band bisquare antenna. i have a link at the top to use this antenna as a loop on 20m if closed and if opened as folded dipole on other bands. feeded via 300ohm ladder line.hope it works good
planned the next weeks due to my working times…and wx is reasonably ok…are many sota activations
the following weeks i work at a different place farer away from my home qth.so i will take every freetime to activate a summit there.
at 23-24.sept and from 2-4.okt i´m off from work and hope for good wx to start some summit tours in dm/bw area again.
and thanks for all off your calls the last three days…
i had a lot of fun and worked also a lot of dx, seen nice different landscapes,
beautiful summit-views and…so on. super days !
many hundreds of kilometer driven, but therefore i worked my first VK-chaser on 12m, meet a lot of new friends from NA on the air and enjoyed the sometimes little pileups on 12m.
a big thank you !
on every last summit of the day i had time to work 40m for eu. by this way also thanks to the chasers for super quick qso mode, sometimes 12m takes so much time that i had only 60min operating time till sunset. enough for working a lot of chasers on 40m. ssb was not so fine…its not my mode at late afternoon or in the evening, first you have to spend 10…15min to find a free qrg and then its hard to working there in mid of big qrm. on the last summit i had no little antennas…so also big sigs from the east…
but enough to work most known everytime there chasers, specially from the uk.
mostly i´m on 12m at the summits and had meet many new friends from dx on the air. antennas changing from summit to summit. the best results i had yesterday with a bisquare antenna. and today i used a combi-antenna
its a linked dipole as inv.V. for 12/20/40m. but this one has more connectors in it. so i can set the antenna in a few minutes to a delta-loop on 12m and fullsize loop on 20m. only change the links and change the position of the connectors for the suspension ropes.
and this antenna works fb for dx if high enough…good to have so many high trees here on the summit. but sometimes its hard to find a spot with a free take off direction NA in mid of the forest…
In reply to DF2GN:
Hello, Klaus,
congratulations to your great activations. By now, you became an expert on portable wire antennas with a lot of practical experience.
May I suggest that you share some of the details of your antennas - i.e. size, dimensions etc . I am sure that others would also like to experiment with different antennas.
Gratulation zu deinen großartigen Aktivierungen.
Vielleicht findest du gelegentlich Zeit, einige Details und Erfahrungen mit deinen Antennen zu veröffentlichen - ich bin sicher, dass viele gerne diese Antennen nachbauen würden.
Hi all,
home again from DM/BW-044…had a nice activation
today it was again time for 40m. And a good example for the use of contest style qso´ing sometimes…again thank all chasers for quick qso mode.
after looking for dx on 12m it was a bit late for calling on 40m because i had to go from this summit before sunset. but my antenna was a doublet abt. 15-18mtr high in a tree as inv.V…so i had to check with a quick cq on 40m for conds…followed from 61 cw qso´s and 56 ssb qso´s with chasers all over europe from 1500 till 1600utc. and i had enough time for going down the summit before sunset…thats the why i prefer quick qso´s in wintertime or at late afternoon in that i have good propagation on 12m the last activations.
chasers had done a very good job…! i like that also had enough time to work some qrs chasers after the cw part…
12m is very interesting from time to time. a few calls from stateside and a few around europe. very interesting things happens…an station from OK came in with a big echo on the tone. the signal was good, but very hard to read due to the echo…never heard that before in this style…??? Also get calles from PA and north DL…interesting band !
hope cu agn…the next two days i´m off sota
vy 73 Klaus DF2GN
In reply to M0DFA,G6TUH,
Hi Mike and Dave…feel free to call in cw mode everytime, i take the time to make a qso in your speed…no problem !
the last days i reached a new personal record in my cw training…i passed the 70wpm mark in callsign and word training…not ever,but on a good day
i also love qrs cw, its easier sometimes by looking for qrpp qso´s. good for me because i never had a teacher for learning cw and i made a big mistake at the beginning of my cw training. i count the dits and dahs in my brain to learn the code. so i had to learn cw a second time after many many cw qso´s … and then i learned then the code completly new at abt. 35wpm to learn only the rhythm of cw code. so i say to every newcomer, its better to learn the code very fast…then its not possible to count dits and dahs
In reply to DF3MC:
Hi Martin. Sorry, but my english is too bad to explain my antennas
But its nothing spectacular…take a rothammel and build the antennas
thats that i do. i am not a specialist and all my antenna building is like try and error and often against theory the antenna types like inv.L for 160m and delta loops,loops,bisquare. google is your friend. a lot of these antennas are build from looking around different websites. i only learned its good to take a lot of wire and put it high as possible in the air. for most antennas i use, you need high trees. so also not for everyone…i also have no website,because im a computer rookie
but if someone have questions about my antennas…no problem via e-mail. i often have phots from details off the antennas.
the combi antenna … linked dipole + delta loop is very simple. take a linked dipole ( as example for 12/20 and 40m )…the elnght is about 20m. add two links at the end and you have a loop for 20m. add two links after the 20m band links, close the ends and you have a loop for 12m…only have marker on the wire for the suspension ropes then…but a e-mail in this case to expalin more is better
Hi Klaus, I heard you today but my home antenna will not tune, maybe it is kaput. I need to put up a simple wire antenna. Your qso with the OK station sounds like backscatter mode to me.
73 from Inky “many cheesers”
In reply to G1INK:
Hi Steve yes, backscatter sounded ok to me. but never heard this so strong as in this qso…
12m is very interesting. often i can work stations in EU with weak signals, but workable. there is propagation more often as i thinked before. i had a lot of qso´s the last days in a range from 300-1000km with very weak sigs ( PA,OK,OM,F.DL ), too far away for groundwave. so maybe chasers look a bit more often on 12m for a possible qso also if the conditions says no
vy 73 and i hope you get your antenna running on 12m…
and also … many cheesers
Thank you, Klaus. I started learning cw with a Datong electronic tutor over 35 years ago. This device generated variable speed and variable gaps (Like Farnsworth) but only in 5-letter, number blocks - no good for the real world, but I did learn to recognise letters & numbers rather than dits and dahs. It didn’t do pro-signs or punctuation either. I got to 20wpm but what I had learned wasn’t very usefull. Then the family got in the way, and I started long-distance running (as addictive as SOTA) (I have run the London Marathon - nuts!)
Recently I’ve used G4FON on the computer, but only up to 20wpm. I can read some letters/numbers faster, but not reliably. The main problem is that I started by writing everything received and sometimes my old brain hears one thing and writes another! I’ve tried reading (rather than writing) morse, but this will take a lot more practice. My sending is not very good either, - the connections between memory, brain and hand is not 100% reliable.
I have occasional cw QSOs, but find it very hard work.
My QTH antenna is an inverted ‘V’ doublet, with an auto tuner near the top and coax to my shack. For SOTA I now use a 7 metre vertical wire on a telescopic fishing pole with 5 metres of wire on the ground as a counterpoise, tuned with an auto tuner - not very efficient but easy to set up on open hill-tops. When my XYL and I are away in our touring caravan, I sometimes use a home made magnetic loop made of a cage of 6 wires and tuned with a twin-gang capacitor connected stator-to-stator.
In reply to M0DFA:
Hi Dave, and thanks for information. the 7m vertical should working good. have the same here as two times 7mtr up and outer with 300ohm feeder. good for dx
and the cw learning never ends i learned cw a second time because i get also interesting in highspeed cw and plaintext qso´ing. and then you can´t write it down or count dits and dahs…it sound more like rtty sometimes;-) you have to decode it in your brain direct to plaintext without hearing the single cw signs.
at the beginning you hear nothing…but from week to week it getting better and you understand cw code as good as spoken words…oh, i love this cw stuff
i like these qrs calls very much, because everyone was a beginner before…and happy about every new qso …
i´m often on the site from fabian… lcwo.net ! also a good tip to learn cw…
now its time for bed
but only in 5-letter, number blocks - no good for the real world,
73s de Dave, G6DTN
That was the real world when I learnt!
Pages and pages of 5 figure groups and WX ships sending automated cut number blocks for an hour at a time. And there was no collation at the end so you had to get it right. Lovely
You still need to learn 5 figure groups before you progreess to plain language otherwise you just end up guessing what comes next, a dangerous slippery slope to failure.
Second that Dave. I think poor Klaus nearly fell asleep with my speed 8)
I’ll third (or fourth, or Nth) that. Thanks for taking the time.
In reply to G4ISJ:
dangerous slippery slope to failure.
I didn’t really make any progress with Morse until I abandoned random character generators, and Koch, and went back to ABC. Callsign training is the nearest I’ll go to random characters at present.
Hi all,
and thanks for your calls today on my activation of DM/BW-093. Antenna was a linked dipole as inv.V. for 12,20 and 40m. Had 82 qso´s on cw and 80 qso´s on ssb. the dipole was very high again in a tree… at abt. 18m up at the feedpoint. a big pile up on 40m in ssb…wow ! thanks
and for all who asked…on ssb i was NOT QRP today
today i was looking for EU most time, but i had also a nice pile up on 24mhz with qso´s all over north america…fine
at home i noticed a spot from ZL2HAM later on 40m. maybe its worth a look for VK next time on this band ?
so…thanks all…tomorrow i have to work, then i´m 3 days off from work and have a bit more time for sota…wx forecast predicts snow down to 700m at friday…mhhhh, in winter or bad conditions i don´t do so long stays on the summits. so i looking then for eu or dx. but if the pile ups running as good as the last time on 40m a “quick” call is possible everytime…
In reply to DF2GN: Just wanted to say many thanks for all the sota contacts Klaus. I’ve only been chasing for a little over a year and I have you in the log 34 times so far. I’ve worked you more than any other EU country. Always fun to watch the sota site to see what kind of antenna you are using for the day. You have great ears too. I’m running a QRP K3 at 5 watts and a dipole at 8 meters and over 90% of the time you hear my little signal. 73 Klaus and hope to catch you on many more summits. CW rocks! All the best. de Scotty KG3W
In reply to KG3W:
Hi Scotty,…today you had a big signal here !! congrats for your 5w in ssb !!
i had a lot lot of fun on DM/BW-042…only on the summit to build and try out 2 antennas. but at the end i managed it only to build one small antenna , because i needed the time from 1519-1711 to clear the pile up. never thinked about to do sooo many qso´s in a single band activation on 12m only. maybe the qso´s can be more, but i made qrt before darkness…not enough night equipment with me so a big sorry for other who wait on 20 or 17m band, but even i had a antenna for this band, i had need all the time on 12m to work all chasers before sunset…
and for all who are not in my log…sorry for that, but after the first 30qso´s on cw a big signal station comming up and told me “QRM QRM QSY QSY TU” over and over again… Thats the reason for working split later. but “my friend” called a few minutes later also on my rx qrg. but the qsb and conditions moved away this problem later it was very hard to work sometimes weak chasers. but it works with agc off and big ears in mid of this S9+20db “QRM QRM QSY QSY TU”…
antenna was a very high up tree supported delta loop with a good take off to north america and maybe a bit off groundgain on the west side of the summit.
my antenna test ended with a new personal record on the qso rate on 12m band…
so thanks all for calling in and hope we can repeat that next time
In reply to DF2GN:
HUGE 24 MHz signals today Klaus! Keep up the great work! I hope to grab you for another P2P contact, as soon as I can get back into the mountains. This weekend perhaps.
Hi all,
and sorry for the stations i could not work on 40m ssb at the end of todays activation on DM/BW-057. I heard some stations calling me, but very very weak and the QRM was at around S7 to S9 later. Same on 24Mhz … a lot of qrm on a busy band today. one or two stations i could not work…sri !! i do my best but sometimes it dosen´t work to have all chasers in the log…
Antenna today was again a very simple linked dipole as inv.V. very high in a tree.maybe to high for 40m at this time for working close stations.had again a rbn spot from ZL2HAM. Also a good antenna for 12m. testet so many antennas but also a inv.V works very well, if high enough ! think better as my gp antenna on the ground…next test is to keep the 12m part of the dipole in horizontal position with the help of two short poles…lets look how it works.
today i also had no time to go on 20m.it becomming dark and i go qrt only a few minutes before sunset after 40m ssb. in moment its fine on 24mhz,only a few CQ´s and a lot of stations in the log,so there is no need to look for other qso´s outside sota on this band.
and again … thanks for the 40m chasers…very quick qso mode, so it was possible to work a lot of atations in cw and ssb in not much time. but i can´t do 40m on all of my activations…time,wx,antennas…the last two days with 40m on board i had to log 290qso´s on BW-168 and BW-057.so i hope everybody is ok with the rubber stamp qso mode. the next summer is comming and then its time again for ragchewing sometimes.
Tomorrow i´m on DM/BW-156 to go for reaching 10.000 logged sota qso´s in this year since February…The last QSO today was nr. 9982…wow, very active chasers !!! Thanks !
if i have one , i call also on 40m for eu chasers. lets see how my shorter antennas work on 40m the next time…maybe i take a little hf packer amp with me for the ssb part.
