AmateurRadio.com

Radio activity is a little low on this side. I have a lot of other things to do. Most of the time I let WSPR run on 10 meter at daytime and on 160 m at night. All this to avoid dust on my rig. This morning I was listening on 10 meters and I heard UK8OWW from Uzbekistan on 28.005 MHz calling CQ. I realized that I never worked Uzbekistan before, so it’s a new DXCC for me. Not that I am a DXCC chaser, but a new one is always nice. It’s my 126 DXCC, in 5 years’ time. After my absence of 30 years I started all over again in 2008. Yeah, I know some of you worked 126 DXCC or more in one weekend with contesting. But not me. Okay, Uzbekistan is in my log now.

I bought a fiberglass GFK pole 11,5 meters long (collapsed 1,5m) for attaching an end fed wire. I still had a 20m (10m long) end fed and put it up as a vertical. This idea comes from Hans PE1BVQ to buy this pole at Elektrodump (51 euros) I removed the 6 meter vertical and replaced it for this ‘vertical’ the used end fed (my holiday antenna) is tuned for 20m, but with my MFJ-925 antenna tuner I can tune it from 80-10m with a good flat SWR. Of course I don’t know what the efficiency will be. But, as always I test my antennas using WSPR. My other end fed is a multiband for 40-20-10m as a sloper. Highest point 7 meters. Both are not made for 80 m only tuned with the ant tuner. So this morning on 80m. Already I had good results yesterday. I did a short test with time real close to each other. Best DX with the ‘vertical’ overall. With the sloper I was also spotted ‘nearby’ . Lowest distance 153 km. With the vertical was the lowest distance: 344 km. Maybe it has to do with a lower radiation angle of the ‘vertical’ position of the end fed. Best DX was almost 2000 km at 80m this morning. I will do more tests on other band next week. By trial and error. The vertical endure wind gusts up to 90km/h so far.