…is a Ham Radio Special Event running all this week. I forgot that it started before the 4th, so I wasn’t paying attention until today. Derp.
One of the things I’d noticed during and just after Field Day is that although my long-wire antenna should tune up well on 80-meters (it’s more than long enough, and 80M is why I bought it), getting it matched up with the knobs of the MFJ-949E was super fussy on 80. Like, I’d get the SWR down to near 1.1:1, but then when I let go of the knob, it would jump back up to 2.5:1. Grr. None of this fussiness was noticeable while I was only tuning for the best receive performance, so as to listen up and down to the net total of nothing on the bands during not-Field Day. LOL
It was probably Wednesday or Thursday of the following week that I was walking by the place on the exterior wall where the bulkhead connector passes through, and the A/B switch goes to the two antennas – suddenly it struck me. The feedpoint of the long-wire is just at the top of my reach (8′), and the bulkhead is pretty near glory-hole level. The feed-line drops to the ground, has a little bit of slack, then runs up the wall to the feed-point. So – that’s probably a 12′ section, give or take.
Inside the house, the jumper from the bulkhead to the tuner is 3′, then a 1.5′ section to the Transceiver. Anybody adding this up, yet?
Yeah… the feed-line might’ve been long enough for 20M, and probably OK for 40M, but was far too short for 80M. Apparently there’s some extra magic going on if you’re transmitting, and not just listening. I grabbed another 20′ or so section of coax and a double-female connector, and inserted it betwixt, then tried tuning up again on 80M. Holy cats, much better.
So I’m going to put in a half-hearted effort to log all 13 of the Special Event 13 Colonies stations during the remainder of the week. Last year, I didn’t hear about this event until the last day, if I remember correctly. Then I did an absolutely horrible job of taking note of it to remember for this year.
Hear ye, hear ye… Derp!
I just remembered something I was going to note about the 13 Colonies thing… when contacting the special event stations on CW, I am using 13W of TX power. Just… ‘cuz.
So far, so good. Probably around 2 hours hunting for these guys, off and on today (just back from lunch). I have nearly half so far. A couple of these guys, I’ve landed on the first try, by operating split while most of the other stations I hear are not. I tune just a bit higher than the pack, and bingo.