I put up the WARC antenna last week after taking down the 80m vertical used for CQ WPX SSB. It was only yesterday that I finally gotten around to make some contacts. Nothing spectacular but worth mentioning is a nice late night opening (21.00 utc) on 30m. I worked a few JA’s at their sunrise, a real DX UA9 (8000 km range), two loud VK’s, a bunch of USA (still broad daylight there) and out of the blue a very loud PY4. Too bad I was tired from a very busy weekend and Monday, so I quit after 45 minutes. But there you go: 30m always delivers DX. Solar flares and crazy A/K indexes aside.
I tried my DX luck again this morning. FK8DD was spotted on 20m. Worked him easily. I think it may be a new one, but if so too bad he doesn’t use LotW according to QRZ . I worked some other DX on 30, then tried E51M on 40m. The signal was only so-so but I’ve worked weaker ones before. Although there was not really a problem on the DX QRG, some idiot started sending ‘PIGS’ and ‘DOGS’ over and over again (hence the title of this posting) on the DX’s frequency. Bye bye DX. I tried to sit it out but the jammer just kept throwing pigs and dogs around. Until the DX noticed the dropping rate and E51M moved to 40 SSB according to the cluster so I didn’t bother anymore. A crying shame once again. I went downstairs and had me a less beefy breakfast.
2 replies on “Hot Dogs and Pork for breakfast”
What are you using for a WARC antenna? I have a 160m T vertical that I take down after the 160 season and try other antennas. Last year I built a J pole for 17m that I never got to work. I think I am going to try to rework it this year and try again, but also picked up a used R8 vertical and may just try that as my secondary antenna (45m Windom OCF dipole at 15m is the main antenna).
73 John K3TN
I used to have a trapped Fritzel triband WARC rotary dipole on top of the yagi. That was a killer antenna for its simplicity. Given the height, there was clearly a null and a favourable direction. It blew up due to dirt or moisture in Winter 2010 (pictures). Since then the 40m rotary dipole (shortened with loading coils) took its place. Another winner in the apples-apples comparison.
What to do for WARC then? As a rule I NEVER hang out on the regular bands outside of contests. Working some DX aside. Since I mostly do contests and only now and then have the time to play on WARC, loading the tower with yet another permanent WARC antenna seems a bad idea.
So I did what I always do: make a simple resonant antenna that I can pull up along the tower with a rope and pulley. In this specific WARC case, I made a 30m dipole with the well known 8 Euro coax-centerpiece, and hung shorter dipoles for 12m and 17m parallel to it, sharing the same feed point. The wires are kept apart from each other by means of plexiglass strips with holes drilled through which I run the wires.
Here is what I mean, a traditional multiband design.
The benefit is that I can use it as an inverted V (tower only 15m up) or a sloping dipole (tower 21m up). In the latter case, the V becomes too sharp given the apex height. Too bad the garden doesn’t stretch along with the tower HI.
I prefer the inverted V configuration as it has less directivity compared to the sloping dipole setup.
It is no match for the straight rotary dipole I had before, but it sure works and doesn’t cost an arm or a leg. It simply coils up in a box when not active.
Whenever I call CQ in CW on any WARC band with about 800W, I work DX in all directions. Of course the better the propagation the better the DX but from here this simple and cheap antenna can only be outgunned by rotary antennas with gain.