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georgel;n93618 said:The Carolina Windom IS an 80m OCF.
I know brother, I know LOL
I mean the HTPOCFD
georgel;n93618 said:The Carolina Windom IS an 80m OCF.
noway2;n99813 said:I think I got a Chinese radio station too, but I'm not sure.
Resurrecting this older thread. I finally ordered an HF radio and I am anxiously awaiting the email indicating that it has shipped. In the mean time, a guy I talked to regularly during my morning commute is coming over to my house tonight with an antenna analyzer. I am curious to see what the performance of the one I put up is. My installation was less than ideal and I ended up with an inverted V that isn't quite 180 degrees along the axis (though I think I may be able to make it straighter by tying off to a different tree - will have to investigate. It was basically the same antenna design you used, but installed differently so I am curious to compare.Wow, yeah update is needed.
(snip)
I decided I wanted an Offset Center Fed Dipole antenna. which by design gives a low SWR on 80, 40, 20, 10 and is easily tunable on most other bands with most antenna tuners. .
We shall find out soon enough. David Macchiarolo, AJ4TF - the guy with the analyzer, insists that the distance to ground and the presence of trees will have a significant impact on the SWR to where he suspects that the radio's built in tuner (can go from 16.7 to 150 ohms or 3:1) won't have sufficient capability to bring it in to successfully transmit without the aid of an external tuner.In the real world Matt, I doubt that there is any difference. I would try it like it is to see how it does. Congrats on the radio.
We shall find out soon enough. David Macchiarolo, AJ4TF - the guy with the analyzer, insists that the distance to ground and the presence of trees will have a significant impact on the SWR .
The more I think about it, some coax seal on the connectors and a box over it will be the way to go. The fact that they're not weatherproof seems absurd when you consider that the recommended installation method is clamped to the ground rod, outside, and you don't want the discharge to be inside the house WTF?Sounds like you're making good progress I took the Avenue of covering the polyphase with a little metal box . One other feed line is covered by a rain shield and a drip loop in the coax. It is kind of strange that they're not weatherproof isn't it .
No, #4 wire is the plan, the 1/8" x 2" flat bar is to mount the Polyphaser in (stud mount) and the ground rod is connected to the flat bar. I found the solid copper flat bar on ebay, no one has it locally except some copper plated stuff. Since I don't have it bonded yet, none of it is assembled, I just disconnect the coax every time I am done using the station.
I made my first SSB contact last night. There were some guys up towards the NE that talk on 80m routinely at about 8pm. After lurking for a while I joined in. The one guy is located around Penn State Univ and he was clear. There was one in NH that was supposedly having amplifier issues and running low power. His signal didn't even show in the water fall display but I could make out a lot of what he said. I was running 75W (chosen at random) LSB and they repeatedly said my audio signal quality was "beautiful" and wanted to know what I was running.Congrats. Sounds like you did a good job of grounding. Tying into the main service entrance ground is important.
20m is going to be your "money band" in the mornings and afternoons...say, until about 5-6 pm. from 4-6 PM 20 will produce some surprisingly good DX even at this part of the sunspot cycle. 40-80 is always full in the evenings. Likewise 10-12-15-17....check during sunlight hours. There's always someone on 20 during the day. Make sure you're in USB mode!
80M is where I hear a lot of stuff that's in language I (thankfully) don't understand....