Well, that's certainly unassailable scientific evidence, no doubt about it.  Well designed double-blind randomized trials (none of which have *ever* shown any benefit of homeopathic tinctures over placebo) don't hold a candle to this sort of well-documented anecdotal evidence.

  :-)  :-)  :-)   

As Nigel said in Spinal Tap:  "That puts it all in perspective, dunnit?" 

Gosh, all this time I thought cell towers did both.  I had no idea some were send-only and others were receive-only.  Maybe I better send them $84 so I can test for BOTH?         (The old-time snake-oil salesman is still here, only instead of a horse and wagon, he has a website.)  :-)

I know a man who was a "natural healing and alternative medicine practitioner"; he wrote a couple of books on "curing cancer the natural way," without doctors and hospitals.  Then he got lymphoma, and announced he would cure himself by going to Mexico to eat peaches, and injecting himself with some sort of chemical you can only get from Canada.   He died not long after that.  But his website is still offering the books for sale.  :-/

Nothing about homeopathic "medicines" can possibly be affected by RF.  They also can't be affected by sunlight, magnetic fields, phases of the moon, or science, evidence-based medicine, and common sense.

Krish, I don't know anything about the antennas, but I DO have a suggestion:  For your own peace of mind and wellbeing, you should set up a sked with the hams back in the Raleigh area.  Particularly those of us who don't have 8Q7 confirmed yet.      --ken

Fred and Phil are right, IMO.  I love window line, use it for anything I can.  But if you're going to run something along the ground, it needs to be coaxial cable.

You may not want to consider it, but a remote autotuner at the end of the coax may be useful for you.  For several months recently I was using a doublet fed with window line that ended at my garage, at an autotuner with a balanced output.  From the autotuner to the house was coax, along the ground.  Worked well, zero fuss.  Your mileage may vary.    Offer void where prohibited.  Close cover before striking.  These statements have not been evaluated by the US FDA.     --ken

I just took a look at the TX5K website, and at DXA.  WOW.  Absolutely fantastic!  The technology is just amazing, and the overall website is terrific, too.  Looking at the team on the website, I'm not surprised this is such a superb operation---that's an all-star cast!  :-)  TNX ES 73 to the TX5K crew!

Harry, I've got to agree!  I listened to the pileups for a while this weekend, and was really impressed at how well the CW ops were handling HUGE pileups.   This afternoon I was driving home from work and heard the expedition on 17m phone, and the pileups were much smaller than on CW.  The op handled calls very efficiently, frequently gave his callsign and where he was listening, and worked the pileup fast and well.  GREAT op!  (And he heard ME in the pileup, which impresses me even more, considering I was running 80 watts to a hustler from a tiny car on the highway.)  ;-)  Great ops, great operation!  THANK YOU, TK5X!  :-)

I've been noticing the same thing, though some (not all) other websites are also running really slowly.

We had a problem at work last week that wound up being an ISP somewhere in the country that was having problems--not OUR ISP, and not the ISP of the institution we send data to on the web.  (shrug) 

You know how electricity works, right?  Elves inside the wires push the electrons from place to place.  And sometimes the elves are in a bad mood, I guess. 

Great, Daniel!  Glad to hear you got on the air and enjoyed yourself!   There's a whole WORLD of fun waiting for you! 

The propagation summary said "fair" for 15meters, but I spent a while playing in the contest this weekend, and had some nice openings to Africa on Saturday, and then Sunday afternoon (a few hours ago as I write this) there were European stations nearly wall-to-wall.   Even 10m, which was "poor" by the summary, had nice openings on Friday evening and Saturday morning.

When you are ready to try HF, Daniel, those contests are a great way to work lots of stations very quickly.   You could work your first 100 countries on HF with one good contest weekend!  :-)  But you may not want to give that a try just yet. 

Again, welcome to a wonderful hobby, Daniel!  And welcome to eham.net; there are some great people here with a lot of experience and opinions to share.  73!  --ken

Words to live by, Mike--words to live by.   

Daniel, a lot of places have very little activity on 146.52.  A good place to start would be a couple of the local repeaters.  When one is silent for a couple of minutes, key up and give your callsign.  You can add "Am I making it into the repeater, please?"   Some repeaters are friendlier to new users than others--but you'll find out which ones are the most friendly after a bit of operating.

Congratulations on that new ticket!   Have fun!    --ken

I' ve heard them VERY well on 15 and 17m; weakly on 10m, here on the east coast.  I couldn't make it through the pileups, but their signals are great and I think I've got a good chance when the pileups thin out.  Sounds like there are some GREAT ops on CW and RTTY both!

The question was directed to Rick, the OP, but I'll offer a few observations:  He said he has an SUV.  That means the roof is 150-170cm above ground.  Very few American cars have anything CLOSE to enough roof structural strength to support a decent-sized HF antenna, without extensive alterations.  And unless Rick is one of the few people who live in rural treeless areas, a big HF antenna on the roof is impossible because of trees and other obstacles.

So a roof-mount would limit Rick to a very small HF antenna.  That's certainly why *I* use a bumper-level mount with a larger antenna--because a roof-mounted HF antenna would be very limited by the need to make it physically very short.  Just MHO, but that's how it works for me.    --ken