After long being tired of the poor performance of my HF9v with 18 radials, I finally sold it off to a fellow ARROW club member for what I had invested (not a lot) and was left with the radial field in the woods (now mostly buried after 3 years). I let it sit for a while, wandering out there every few weeks to prune a few branches and stare at the mast and wires sticking out of the berm between my yard and the freeway. I went by it when I was re-working the big horizontal loop, which broke around Labor Day, and kept thinking of what to do … pull up the radials? That seemed like a shame. Or put them to use them somehow else?
Congratulations to all the new hams from the Hands on Museum class of 7 November 2009
KD8MJU Adam R. Carpus
KD8MJV Ari D. Morris
KD8MJW Brian M. Retzlaff
KD8MJX Steve R. Peterman
KD8MJY Elizabeth C. Gilday
KD8MJZ Dawn Chambers
KD8MKA Nandan Sawkar
KD8MKB Karin K. Riske, no email address
KD8MKC Daniela Gomez, no email address
KD8MKD Sally A. Carpinella
KD8MKE John I. Hritz, Jr.
Hope to see you all at the next Arrow club meeting on Dec 9th at the Red Cross chapter 4624 Packard Rd.
Meet Hamlet, the newest member of the WA2HOM team. Mostly he just sits around and chews the fat, but I’m trying to teach him CW.
Spring contest season demanded a new antenna that would handle 160m with some efficiency and compliment my other antennas. I settled on the >1 wavelength horizontal loop for its multi-band potential, relative invisibility, and ease of matching. Anything over a wavelength on 160m (540′ length) would be sufficient, but longer is better, as it lowers radiation angles and improves performance.