The YL Does It Again

Buy her book-buy me a tower!
On Amazon-Huzzah!

Shameless flogging. 73 de Rob

QRPp or 8000 miles to the Watt

The new antenna must have something going for it, F5SYC confirms me at 0.5W on 20M

 (Merci Philippe!).

73 de Rob

Big Bambu

My sojourn in SE Asia gave me an appreciation for the building qualities of bamboo so when I decided to try the top fed grounded vertical from the RSGB Practical Wire Antennas book, I found my support growing amuck in my neighbor's yard. A little wire and some lashing and it was up-it seems to work as good as the grounded sloper but may be a bit noisier, time will tell. In any case a $0 investment. No this was not the top band version but it was scaled to 40M and will tune 20, 15 and sorta 12 as well. Not bad for bell wire and bamboo.

73 de Rob

We Were Soldier Update

Various old grognards related relatively low power VHF AM/FM contacts in the 2300-4500 mile range. About 10,000 miles is needed for the hop in the story. And John had the gall to call me a geek http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2011/10/a_bleg_no_not_f.html#comments

73 de Rob

We Were Soldiers RTO

Someone asked my opinion about a scene in the movie, We Were Soldiers, where the RTO ginned up a doublet antenna for an AN/PRC-25 and copied a firefight in Viet-Nam into the American south. Could it have been done? The PRC-25's were FM at about 5 watts and in the 6 Meter band IIRC. In 1964, about the time of the events, the solar cycle was bottomed out but Sporadic-E propagation is seasonal and not dependent so much, if at all, on the solar cycle. Sporadic-E is the most common  DX mode for 6 Meters. The best I've  done on 6 Meters was about 5K miles to Uruguay at about 8 watts into a dipole variant. This was single sideband mode-more efficient than the FM PRCs. I've heard claims for trans continental with 5Watt FM handhelds so maybe it's possible. Any old RTOs out there have similar stories?

Tis a puzzlement
73 de Rob

Now if I Only Got Iceland and Finland Confirmed

Of course I was QRO (5W)
73 de Rob

15 Meters Got me a New One

At 2.5 watts!   73 de Rob