EVENT:
ARRL 10-Meter Contest, Sunday, December 15, 2002.
MY LOCATION:
Springfield, Missouri, elevation above sea level 1,382 feet.
ANTENNA:
Four Foot Steel Moving Dolly, as Vertical Element, with 1x1 Inch Chicken Wire Ground Plane. Dolly fed from center conductor of the coax and the Chicken Wire fed from the shielding.
ESTIMATED HEIGHT ABOVE THE EARTH:
10 feet at the feed-point (the bottom of one side of dolly, and edge of chicken wire).
RIG / TUNER:
Icom 746, at 100 watts, MFJ-969, Drake Filter.
I was able to fully load this di-pole to 100 watts transceiver output (my rig's maximum output).
TOTAL CONTACTS / TIME:
10 contacts, from 10:15 UTC to 11:20 UTC.
Total operating time was 1 hour and 5 minutes.
Average of one contact every 6.5 minutes.
DX CONTACTS:
LOWER 48 CONTACTS:
| wn6k, CA | n0ax, WA | w7gg, OR | wx6v, CA | ||||
| n6ccl, CA | wm7n, WA | w7qn, WA |
DISCUSSION:
I found this to be a quiet antenna (the folding chairs were the worse). It was interesting to make the p40k contact too, because I was unable to make this contact with one of the other antennas. I didn't really track my "I hear them, they don't hear me" results, but I suspect it was the folding chair dipole that I was unable to make the p40k contact.
The chicken wire screen was a roll 25 feet long and 4 feet wide. I unrolled about 6 feet of it, set a couple 2x4 pieces of lumber on the wire and set the dolly on the wood. The bag is there to keep the thing from blowing / rolling away, and, ironically, filled with #14 antenna wire, di-poles, and counter poise wire! ;^D
What I should've done, and didn't, was use the plastic dog bone insulator in the center of the hose clamp holding the wire to the ground plane chicken wire. This would've allowed me to apply more pressure and get better contact. As it was, however, it worked well enough to get Aruba!