2005 ARRL 160 Meter Contest
06/12/2006 |
6Y0A
We've wanted to do the ARRL 160 from Jamaica for many years, but this is the first time we did it! We've got all our antennas and coax stored at the villa, but each year we try to increase the antenna efficiency, so we rebuilt the 160m vertical using various parts. The new 70' vertical sounded good on paper, but it was a bit wobbly and one of the guy ropes snagged on the way up, and we broke the antenna before it got 10' off the ground.
Plan B: to make sure we could get the antenna up with ease and not waste more time, we cut out the busted section of tubing, and took off the tip to make the vertical more rugged, but shorter. With the help of a gin pole (actually one of our 40m verticals) the 160 antenna went up fine this time, but with 4 top loading wires, and 2 more tiers of guy ropes, it took a while to tweak the guying. We ended up with a 55' vertical with four 40' top loading wires, a mid/top loading coil, and small base loading coil to tune for resonance. We had 2 radials elevated about 14' over salt water, and about 30 ground radials (not attached to elevated radials) of varying length covering the ~180 degrees that was not covered by water.
One of the hams who used our QTH for the WW SSB contest left an amp for us to use that supposedly put out 1200w, but we were lucky to get 300w from it. Nothing we could do about it, so we limped along with 300w for the entire time we were there.
One of our goals was to work JA on Top Band, and we were hoping to have a full KW at hand... Luckily we were rewarded by many JA's calling us even with 300w output. Some of the stong S7 JA's that called could bearly hear us, so we know we need more juice for the next time we try to work JA on Top Band. That said, on 160m we worked a total of 44 unique JA callsigns on this trip, which is about twice the cumulative total of JA's we've worked on Top Band since we started going to Jamaica in 1997. Guess the new vertical works! No RX antennas were used.
Many thanks for all the QSOs and fun! 73, Kenny K2KW & Tom N6BT -- K2KW
Plan B: to make sure we could get the antenna up with ease and not waste more time, we cut out the busted section of tubing, and took off the tip to make the vertical more rugged, but shorter. With the help of a gin pole (actually one of our 40m verticals) the 160 antenna went up fine this time, but with 4 top loading wires, and 2 more tiers of guy ropes, it took a while to tweak the guying. We ended up with a 55' vertical with four 40' top loading wires, a mid/top loading coil, and small base loading coil to tune for resonance. We had 2 radials elevated about 14' over salt water, and about 30 ground radials (not attached to elevated radials) of varying length covering the ~180 degrees that was not covered by water.
One of the hams who used our QTH for the WW SSB contest left an amp for us to use that supposedly put out 1200w, but we were lucky to get 300w from it. Nothing we could do about it, so we limped along with 300w for the entire time we were there.
One of our goals was to work JA on Top Band, and we were hoping to have a full KW at hand... Luckily we were rewarded by many JA's calling us even with 300w output. Some of the stong S7 JA's that called could bearly hear us, so we know we need more juice for the next time we try to work JA on Top Band. That said, on 160m we worked a total of 44 unique JA callsigns on this trip, which is about twice the cumulative total of JA's we've worked on Top Band since we started going to Jamaica in 1997. Guess the new vertical works! No RX antennas were used.
Many thanks for all the QSOs and fun! 73, Kenny K2KW & Tom N6BT -- K2KW
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160m vertical, vi...
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Base loading coil...
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