Barry, N1EU has a website with some great suggestions for making Beverage transformers inexpensively yourself. Following his suggestions, I used small binocular ferrite cores wound with a 3:1 ratio (450 ohm to 50 ohm coax) using 9 turns in the secondary and 3 turns in the primary, and for about 50 cents each they work great.  He suggested not grounding the coax shield at the transformer for lower noise. I used small watertight electric boxes to build the feed point and the terminating boxes.  They drill easily for SO-239 and through bolts for wire connections. You can build them for alot less $$ than you's pay for pre manufactured units. Use a technique that makes it easy to swap out the terminating resistor in case it opens up due to a lightening induced ground surge; that saves time down the road.

Snow and Ice are not a problem, unless you start messing with it and it's frozen to important things like feedlines, grounds wires, etc.  Build it well and let the snow lay there all winter.  Fresh water is a non conductor.

I would say it has to be BS7H.  I was down to the last day or so of the expedition, the pileup on 20M was about 15 kHz wide.  I was able to find where he was listening, and called with my entire 1500W,  he heard me, but got the call wrong, he copied WB3CX instead of AB3CX, and I could not get it corrected. I worked like a madman for the next 25 minutes and somehow got a second  QSO with the correct call in the log.  That was the only band, at that time there were few sunspots and no high band openings for me.

Heard today on 15M CW, slowly working NA or else there so much QSB I only heard some of the contacts. I got them fairly quickly, I think he heard me before I could hear him coming back to me, but it was definite and so I'm pleased to work the ATNO. log. For this expedition, if you can get one QSO it will be major, methinks the demand is going to be extreme.  Every expedition has a goal, here I would guess it should be to try to give everyone a Q, since almost everyone needs it.

I think there was a similar post to this a while back.  I use the SDR-IQ/Spectravue with my Yaesu FT-2000.  I don't think a Panadaptor is that big of a help with DX pileups, because so many lids keep calling in the pileup while not listening  to the DX and not stopping their calling when the DX is working someone specific, or trying to.  The pileup is disorderly, so the visual representation is also disorderly.  I find a sub receiver essential to find out what is going on.  Panadaptors are useful in contesting to find the outliers in search and pounce and to quickly determine where open frequencies may exist for running, and to find out which bands have activity or are open.

Propane torch, silver solder and flux, after polishing the wire clean with a piece of plumbers screen mesh.  Fast, easy. Don't burn yourself, though.

   I was forced to do this contest low power due to my ongoing amp breakdown issue. Anyway, conditions were great on the high bands, anyone could run on 10 meters. Using 100 watts I managed NH2T, lots of JA, YB, VK, ZL, some central Asia and tough middle east mults. I think I'm actually more competitive in the rankings as a low power entrant than I usually am in the  high power assisted category I run.  Might be worth doing again!

There will be a heavier concentration in the 3790-3799 window, but they will be spread all over the phone segment.

I was looking for a thread on this one.  For me somehow VK9X would be an ATNO, and it has evaded me for several years, despite getting much tougher ones. I'm going to start listening for this one at all the right times on the right bands. I was away from home the past few days, so the hunt starts now.

In all seriousness, not trying to be a kidder,,,your antenna may be the issue. Check it out fully. Put up something new.

Very standard thing to do is bury plastic well water pipe, 3 inch diameter which makes great conduit.  Bring each end up into an electrical box through a hole in the bottom of box. Site a box at the tower and one  at the house. Pull your cables and lines through the pipe before you bury it.  It will be cheap and waterproof.  Comes on long rolls and is inexpensive. Put all the rotor control cables, switch lines and some extra line down in there there for the future, plus your coax through the water pipe, run the water pipe up into the electrical boxes at the ends.  Make your line junctions inside the box. Guys use all sorts of boxes from expensive new ones to old salvaged ones. Make sure it's waterproof and ground it.

One yard of concrete is an appropriate base for a Rohn 25 or 45 guyed tower, not a crank up or self supporting tower.

With only a 17 foot run of coax, do not bother with a remote tuner.  Losses in coax are related to length and degree of mismatch.  Use a proper impedance transformer at the vertical if necessary, or a loading coil, and tune the differrence in the shack with a tuner.

Listen to the first poster.  You attach the SWR meter/antenna analyzer directly to the antenna coax to see what your antenna is performing like, to help you adjust the antenna to proper length. Do not use the tuner until you are going on the air and are operating at a point far enough in frequency from where the antenna was tuned to require a tuner to make your rig put out full power. Generally, the modern rig will decrease power outrput once the SWR exceeds a certain margin, like 1.5:1 so then you need a tuner.  Use the antenna analyzer straight to the antenna to optimize the antenna.

I used an R7 vertical for a number of months, it worked pretty well, gave me 40-10 and mine wasn't up 30 feet.  I worked a ton of DX with it.  Your mast would need to be pretty strong to hold it up.  A multiband fan dipole would be tough to get right in that sort of space.