There is activity almost every week from Iran.  But it's local ops with low power and small antenna.  It's very hard to work these guys over the EU pileups from east coast NA.

Heh heh...

This is what I guessed from the previous thread...And your comment now makes me even more inclined.

Plans for new DXpedition not yet announced...

Maybe it's not Monk. But, I'm guessing involves similar ferry boat ride...

I saw the slide show from the Intrepid group...

Good luck, I hope it all works out. 

Not ATNO for me, but it will make a lot of folks very happy.  I'd rather see Navassa or Iran or Myanmar, but I can be patient.

30m in early AM east coast NA also is primetime for the whole world.  So I would not think its the best band for little pistols.
I was there early this morning.  The ops were working EU, NA, Asia intermixed.

Yes the signal was good, but there are hundreds or thousands of callers...

On the other hand they were also S9 on 40m SSB before east coast NA sunrise.  But they seem relatively deaf.  Exceedingly slow Q rate and only working guys here with yagi and QRO.  I think there is a noise problem on 40m for them...

I think the little pistols will have better luck in the evening on 15 or 12 meters. 

Frank,
You are right..

This is all very sad...ANTENNEX steals LB's material...Now they are charging for it.

SAD SAD SAD....Well I am sure it will all come back to them in the long run...

Actually a standard 2 ele Yagi can have higher gain than Moxon.  They are close. 

F/B can be fantastic on Moxon.  But F/R is better on Yagi.

The main advantage of the Moxon is small size.  Also they can be made from wire at low cost.  Maybe they can be more lightweight...In most other ways a standard Yagi is superior. 

But a half decent Moxon can be a big step up from a non-directive wire antenna.  It is amazing at what a few dB of gain and some interference suppression will do to help work more DX.  Many first time beam users are shocked at how much better a small simple beam will work

Actually it does not cost anything to access cebik.com....You just have to register...and re-register every year...
It's a pain but worth it.  You just have to live with some adverts from Antennex.  use a throwaway webmail account and enjoy...

Moxon has great F/B but actually less F/R so it reduces signals 180 degrees off the boresight better, but at other back angles less.  If you model the antenna, you will see the RDF of the 2 ele yagi is better something approaching 7 dB is possible where the Moxon yields 6 dB.  In many situations the interference and noise suppression of the standard 2 el Yagi is superior. 

What Jerry is saying is that having a low ground resistance on the order of 10s of ohms will not materially change the system termination resistance which is in hundreds of ohms.  This is very true.  So the antenna pattern will not be influenced in any significant way even if you only have a poor ground on the Beverage.

I think why some folks think a good ground is needed for Beverage has more to do with common mode problems than termination impedance.  This is a very important issue and if you live where it is very noisy, you should take care to provide adequate choking impedance to avoid common mode pickup.  This obviously is more important on the coaxial feedpoint side of the Beverage.  It is often not enough to rely on the Beverage transformer for common mode suppression.  Attention to the grounding at the transformer and use of multi-turn coaxial choke through large ferrite core at both ends of the feedline may make a difference in noise or interference pickup.

These common mode practices are even more critical for small receiving antennas like flags and pennants.

Maybe do a search for Fahnestock clips.  They are not the kind of springs you are looking for, but in my opinion are better and can provide the same functionality.

Hi Rich,
160M is a fun band and it's amazing what can be done even with small lot.  In reality, the issue with small lot depends on how much local QRN you have and your ability to put up a good RX antenna.  The K9AY is a good start.

It is far easier to put up a half decent TX antenna on topband than a good RX antenna if you don't have lots of real estate.

I see from your QRZ page that you seem to have some pretty tall pine trees either on or near your property that are much taller than your vertical.  If that's true, I'd be inclined to implement an inverted L or U  or some kind of Tee antenna made of wire chucked over the top of one of those tall trees maybe you can make the radiator 60 or 70 ft tall.  The secret to any vertical is the grounding system.  Put down a bunch of wire on the ground as much as you can and add to it over time if you like.  Top loading which can be wire is better than base loading. 

160m is tougher from the west coast, but I think you will still have a lot of fun...

Good luck on topband and hope to see you in the pileups.

-Harry WB3BEL

The spiderbeam is a fine antenna used by many successful DXpeditions.

The problems noted with the previous group were due to not knowing prop to NA, being on the right bands at the right time with the antenna pointed in the right direction and listening for stations in the target area.

There is always prop to this region even with low sunspot activity.  Having seasoned op who understands the paths and will target a region will make a huge difference.

I am still chasing a card for Turkmenistan for a QSO back in 2001.  I just resent once again few months ago.  If anyone knows the secrets to getting a card back from EZ and has received one recently that would be great to know. 

These are two different things entirely.

Antenna modeling can give you information regarding a design before it is built and installed.
The accuracy of the model may be good or bad depending on the quality of the analysis.  If you know how to use the tools and their limitations very good results may be obtained.  

On the other hand if you don't know what you are doing, the antenna modeling may yield bad results.

Using over the air tools for antenna evaluation also provides useful data.  It may be just a sanity check to make sure you did not make a stupid mistake.  Or it might be part of a controlled experiment to measure things that may result in improved performance.  Reverse beacon networks or WSPR reports are tools which can provide data that properly analyzed can give trending on antenna performance.  Just as with the antenna models you have to be careful with the limitations and controls.

They are both useful tools.  I would not trade one for the other any more than I would use my best Snap-on socket driver as a ball peen hammer.

Sure. JT65 QSOs are valid in the ARRL VHF contest if the exchange is complete.

I have made many valid JT65b EME QSOs with K5QE via EME in this contest for example.

I agree that 17 meters is a great DXing band.  But I think that the ease with which DX can be worked on 17 is more than just the great propagation.

A big factor is that many operators simply do not have a good antenna on the WARC bands.  If you have a 2 or 3 element Yagi or equivalent you are in the top tier.

A lot of operators are trying to use a truly bad antenna on the WARC bands.  They are using antennas for other bands with a lot of feedline losses.  Or they are using antennas like long wire or low band dipole which have lots of sidelobes.  If the sidelobe is in the direction of the DX it's great.  But if it does not, it really hurts.  A simple half wave rotatable dipole cut for this band will give a serious leg up on the competition.

There seem to be fewer LID operators on the WARC bands.  Maybe it's just that there are fewer operators period, but I like to believe that the ratio of good ops to bad ops is better on the WARC bands.  40m is also a great DX band.  But holy mackeral it seems like the worst LIDfest these days.  40m CW with all the codereaders, senile citizens and social misfits is brutal.

On the downside, some smaller or less well equipped expeditions may not have good antennas for the WARC bands either.  Or they may not spend as much time on these bands.  That's not necessarily such a bad thing.  I highly respect DXpeditions who put a station on a band and just completely wring it dry.  It gives many stations an opportunity to work an all time new one.  This is why having a decent antenna on the tried and true bands like 20 or 15m will sometimes be essential.

I think that 12m behaves in much the same way as 17m with respect to the above comments.  Although, due to MUF it may not be as reliable on long paths or polar routes.

For meteor scatter using WSJT FSK441 and ISCAT 50.260 USB is the calling frequency.

For Eskip using ISCAT or JT6M 50.230 USB has been a spot where Folks looking for DX have congregated.

http://www.jt6m.org/working-dx.php