There's your problem right there.


Nobody's disputing that you need a tuner to operate in other band segments with a small-bandwidth antenna.  They're disputing that you can't fix part of the problem.  Why spend hundreds if not thousands on a new high-power autotuner when you could take a couple of hours, a little bit of work and raise the antenna?  You'll at least find out if the interaction with the house you've admitted might be taking place is actually the cause.  Plus "higher is better", right?

If your antenna's bandwidth is so small that it presents a 6:1 SWR at the low end of the band, you're going to have loss in the feedline.  Depending on what type of coax you're using and the power you eventually run, you could waste a lot of power in heating the coax even with a high-quality tuner in the shack.

Someone mentioned running the autotuner closer to the feedpoint, and I think that's an excellent idea.  You could easily mount a weatherproof autotuner at/near the top of the tower, for instance, and have a very short coax run to the beam.

First thing I'd do is fix the problem with the impedance changing on the same frequency based on direction.  That's so easy, it's a no-brainer.  Of course just trimming the match with the autotuner is easier, but if there's enough junk in the antenna's near field to send the SWR wonky, it must be playing havoc with the pattern.  That's no help.  If all you have to do is raise it a bit, just raise the damn thing. 

Solve the problems you know you have now before you contemplate other problems you might face when you add an amplifier.

Cheers,

Bob WP2XX

Up-to-date lists of available calls can be found here: http://www.vanityhq.com/

Now if only there was a 2x1 available for USVI... 

That isn't the most douche-baggy thing I have ever heard, but it's close.      Let me see if I have this straight: you don't like dealing with the same interference that all American amateurs are required by regulation to tolerate, so you pose as someone else, post a false spot and think that'll clear "your" frequency (to which you are by no means entitled) for more than a few seconds?

If that's your idea of "fun", you really ought to get out of your mother's basement.  Because to normally socialized humans, that's called "being a pr!ck."

Bob WP2XX

Send nothing in until after the event.  The Field Day Packet has full instructions on submitting your score/paperwork.

Logging software worth downloading will generate a Cabrillo file.  Check the help files for how to do that.  I use N1MM, which is super-easy and free.


You will!  Even if it hoses down rain and is hot as bollocks or whatever, you will have fun.   

73 de WP2XX

My thoughts:

I have a 7000, and prefer it over its Yaesu competitors.  The IF-DSP is simply superior in my opinion to the AF-DSP.  Yes, you can add crystal mechanical filters to the Yaesu models, but once you accessorize the Yaesus to a point where they begin to become competitive with the Icom you start to approach the price point of the Icom out of the box. 

That said, the Yaesus, especially the 897, are eminently more suitable for portable operations than the 7k.  They all run hot, but the 897 stays cooler.  Plus you can get internal batteries for it.

Which radio you prefer depends on a variety of factors.  Your intended use, for one.  My intended use was a small, full-featured radio that would form the centerpiece of a carry-on mini-DXpedition station.  That was in 2008.  If I was going to do it today, it'd be a K3. 

Another consideration is just playing with the things to get a feel for them.  If you have the ability to do so - ham radio store or club members - go and fiddle with them.  The worst thing in the world is to buy a rig because of other considerations then hate using it.

Don't forget the other US manufacturer, too - Ten Tec.  They have a few models that meet your criteria.  The Argonaut is a QRP radio like the 817, but in my opinion vastly simpler and superior performance.  The Eagle is only a little bit larger and gives you the full 100 watts out.  I't actually considering an Eagle for my own shack.  I like the simplicity of the thing compared to the layers of menus and relatively complicated access of those menus on my Icom.

Coax loss is only not a factor when your antennas are resonant.  If you intend to use an antenna tuner in your shack to tune an antenna at the other end of 200' of coax, you may really only be heating up the coax. 

Which leads me to my last thought: All this back and forth about this rig or that rig means positively squat if you don't have an antenna plan.  What kind of rig you have, what features it has, its receiver characteristics, none of that amounts to a hill of beans if you don't have a good antenna with which to receive and transmit signals.  I'd like to hear more about your antenna plan.

Cheers,

Bob WP2XX

Hear, hear.  I love QSLs and QSLing.  I don't get a ton of cards, and I haven't been here long enough for them to really pile up.  But I don't really care, because I really like getting little slices of far away.  Also I feel a keen attachment to the tradition of amateur radio through the act of QSL card exchange.  It used to be that the final courtesy of a QSO was the sending of a QSL card.  I can't afford to QSL every single QSO (I think I'm at something like 1,000 a month, on average), but I respond to every card I get.

I do LotW and (grudgingly) eQSL, too, as well as Clublog.  But I prefer cards.

73 de Bob WP2XX

You're going to have fun.  Field Day is a blast.  It's one of my favorite operating events!

You've got the CQ and exchange stuff right.  I disagree with N7SMI about one thing: I prefer to give phonetics for ARRL Section.  Most everyone uses logging software these days, and software wants the abbreviation.  You don't want to make someone look up "Eastern Washington" to find "EWA" when you could just say "Echo Whiskey Alpha".  When I operated from W3OK in EPA, we said "Echo Papa Alpha".  Opinions vary.

Be sure to have some alternate phonetics available.  On FD weekend the bands will be crammed, and interference rife.  Sometimes the ICAS phonetics don't work.  So keep "Edward Washington America" or something in the back of your head.


If you work a DX station, you give your location.  He gives you "Delta X-ray".

For the love of all that you hold holy, please please please PLEASE don't say, '"Please copy", as in "please copy my one bravo echo whiskey america".  Keep it short, sweet, and simple.  Don't waste time with extraneous words.  Follow N7SMI's example of the exchange, because that's perfect.


An excellent idea.  You should always completely set up your field station, make a few contacts, then pack it away again and don't touch it.  Once you know it works, and you've got all the connectors you need and all that, don't fiddle with it until you unpack it at your FD site.


If you go to 2B, you will still use one callsign for both stations.  You will not use his callsign as well as yours and both sign 2B.  If you're both on the air at the same time, you'll be W7HBP, 2B EWA.  I think you'll be fine working in shifts, though.  Stick with your 1B plan and keep his rig as a backup.  Alternately, you could configure his rig for data modes like PSK and have fun with that.

Listen for NP2VI from the VI section.  We haven't done a FD in years, and we just got a new club call, so we're excited. 

Good luck to you!  You'll be sounding like an old fart in no time. 

73 de Bob WP2XX

Back when I brewed for a living, none of the guys who brewed it could stand the stupid-big IPAs.  We liked beer too much to deliberately drink a beer called "Palate Wrecker".    I brewed my first one as a joke, just cramming hops into my already-quite-hoppy IPA in a cask.  "That'll teach 'em," I thought.  Ten gallons of beer sold out in less than twenty minutes.  We had to scale it from a joke to 15 barrel brews because of demand.

Frankly, we had a lot of fun poking fun at enthusiasts of them.  I used to call mine Ahopalypse Now, and used something like nine different hops varieties in it.  Sure enough, every festival there'd be some twerp...I mean aficionado who would sip carefully, examine the tasting glass as though it contained rubies, nod thoughtfully and say something like "Yes, I can really taste the Cascades in this."  Sure you can, idiot, because that's the one variety I didn't use.  

I calculated that to be something like 95 IBU with so much late-hops it always looked slightly green.  I stopped worrying about the IBU because tasting panels conducted by UC Davis reported years ago that the human senses cannot discriminate much above 75 to 100+ IBU; all the senses report is BITTERBITTERBITTEROHGODITSBITTER.


I positively ADORE Unibroue.  Unibroue and Ommegang are brewing some of the finest beers available in North America.

Re: Single malt Scotch.  My wife has a hypothesis with which I agree.  Scots only make that to sell to stupid tourists.  "Och, Jamie, I'll nae drrrrink tha'.  Tha's the stuff we put the dirrrrrt in.  Forbye some Sassenach gobshite will pay us $100 for that bottle o' peat bog.  Gi' me the bottle of Vat 69, d'ye ken?"  

I attribute the tastes of both single-malt Scotch and stupid-big IPAs to the American propensity for BIGGERFASTERLOUDERMOREMOREMORE, because neither product really has anything going for it except outrageous, obvious flavors.  True, I can't stand the stuff.  That's taste differences, I suppose.

Now, as to the OP.  I run simplex until it gets rowdy.  Should that happen, I go split.  I'm not VK9NT, but I get my share of rowdy piles; had one the other day on 12m CW.  You have to know how to run your pile, and you have to be totally unafraid to QSY or pull the plug should you lose control of your pile.  If your split is huge, you've lost control of your pile.  If your pile turns into a lidfest, you have to be unafraid of tell the pile, "Knock it off or I'm pulling the plug."  If more limited-time DXpeditions had that philosophy I think the lid problem would be fixed in short order.  They put too much emphasis on QSO count, in my opinion.  If you generate bedlam on the bands, it doesn't matter how many Qs you raked in.  Plus, if you keep your pile well-behaved, you'll make more Qs.  If you're working 6/hr rates because of bedlam when you can work 200/hr rates with a civilized pileup, it actually makes sense to go the hell to bed - after telling the pileup precisely why you're pulling the plug.

Personally, I have a list of "Never work these douche-cannons" next to my radio.  There are several callsigns on that list.  I don't add calls lightly, but I do add them.  I don't care if you're the only signal on the band or that last mult I need to hit a contest goal, I ain't working you.  

73 de WP2XX

Rich, K3VAT is spot on.  My ground plane is within 3' of the waterline and it BARKS.   Repeatedly in ARRL DX SSB, I had stations asking me if I wanted to change me "59 100" to "59 1k".  Note it's a ground plane, however, not just radials tossed into the sea; that really doesn't work as well for some reason probably detailed in the Team Vertical data. 

I'm about to install a 4BTV for testing purposes.  It'll be further away from the water (about a wavelength on 10M), but higher.  We'll see how it compares to the wire GP.

Cheers de Bob WP2XX

LIX, how many bands did we work you on from KP2M?  Five or six?  I can't remember, though I do remember seeing your call in the piles.

Bob WP2XX

M6BYN -

It is not only acceptable for non-participants to give out contacts in a contest, it's actively solicited!    

You don't need to turn in a log, though it's really really easy to do that.  Just make a few contacts with different stations.  It's a good way to work new DX entities for QSLs and awards, and it's a lot of fun!

To address the signal report issue: Yes, it's true that signal reports are commonly "perfect".  Yes, it's true that contest logging software automatically enters perfect reports, and it's a PITA to change them to "real" reports.  However, non-contesters should know that it's not uncommon for a pileup to be on my frequency when I'm contesting.  I may hear you perfectly well - "59" or "599" - but need a few exchanges to properly record your call through the pileup din.  So before you disdainfully discard the "always perfect signal report", keep that in mind.  I'm not rare DX, but I am DX, and often I get a pileup of really strong signals I need to wade through to get the call right.

Cheers,

Bob WP2XX (formerly NQ3X), St Croix, US Virgin Islands

bah-dum-TSSH!

Yup.  I've gotten several SWL QSL cards since moving down here.  As long as you do what I ask on my QRZ entry, I don't care if it's a ham or SWL card, you'll get one in return.

Bob WP2XX

I'm no expert in this, but I know I for one would appreciate a reception report from an SWL regardless of circumstances.  If I'm in QSO with someone, great.  If not, also great.  My signal is my signal, whether I'm saying "Thanks, you're 59, my name is Bob" or "CQ DX CQ DX this is Whiskey Papa 2 Xray Xray".

Cheers,

Bob WP2XX

Yes.  From http://www.ncjweb.com/naqplogguidance.php -

For North American countries, other than the US and Canada, use the standard ARRL DXCC entity prefixes. Other abbreviations are acceptable as long as they unambiguously designate the QTH. For example, AL will be interpreted as Alabama, not Alaska or Alberta. A blank or "DX" for the copied QTH is only acceptable for logging QSOs with stations outside of North America. Lists of standard abbreviations [for North American DXCC entities] can be found at

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/DXCC/dxcclist_2012.txt

If it says "NA" under Continent on that list, it counts as North America for NAQP multipliers.  Virtually all of the Caribbean islands in the from Cuba south through the Windward Islands to (but not including) Trinidad are NA, as well as Greenland and Bermuda and what we call Central America down to and including Panama.  There's a BUNCH of NA DXCC entities, enough to make NAQP interesting.  I heard at least three KP2 stations on, and some Cubans.

Make sense?

Cheers,

Bob WP2XX