160M contest woes

NG7Z Paul — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:20:31 +0000

I was looking forward last summer to doing some decent contesting on 160M with an inverted L I had put up. However, I had also put up an 80M dipole close by to see if it would outperform the inverted L on 80M. The L is fed directly with an Icom AH-4 remote auto tuner. I did this purposely to have the option to work all bands in the event my other antennas failed. This was prior to erecting the tower and beams. It turned out that the dipole was better so I pulled the L down. But, of course, that made it impossible to work 160M. So another option was needed. There was still a rope in a very tall tree left over from an 80M delta loop that Steve, W7QC, had helped me put up. So prior to the Stew Perry, I pulled up 120 feet of wire and attached 10 radials along with the aforementioned auto tuner. This seemed to work pretty well for transmitting as I could work anyone I could hear. But the key word here is “hear”. Unfortunately, I live very close to a PUD right of way that has two three phase HV runs. In fact, my west property line borders this right of way. So it is a very noisy environment on 80 and 160 meters here. I’ve solved the 80 noise problem but not the 160 noise problem.

N7KE - Radio Club of Redmond » NG7Z Paul

160M contest woes