A good contest station needs Yagis in fixed directions so that a multiplier can be worked right away. I bought two GXP 11-3 to be put on a 36m tower, just below GXP 17-4. One was to be put at 17m fixed to SE (Caribbeans and South America) and another Read more
My 4 sq did pretty well in the ARRL DX contest and also in CQ 160 SSB. But it was noisy. Perhaps because the elements were not tuned, with resonances from 1.78 to 1.84 MHz I decided to tune the elements to around 1.83. The impedances were: 42 Ohms for Read more
My 160m transmit signal with the shunt tower was OK but not great. In contests, I heard many DX stations well but could not work them until the conditions were better. Definitely I was in the middle of the crowd. Still miracles occurred. In 2025 CQ WW 160, special conditions Read more
The installer lifted the GXP 17-4 antenna to 110 ft and could not get it any higher. Partly because his gin pole was unstable. He arranged for a younger installer, who was waiting for a good weather on a weekend. All while the 40m element was grinding in the wind. Read more
I decided to add an extra 120′ (36m) tower to have a better signal in contesting. My signal from the current 100′ (30m) tower is not competitive on 20m and 40m so I decided to upgrade a 2 el 40m beam to 3 elements and 3 el 20m beam to Read more
Austria is 80% mountainous. Wherever you are in the mountains, they are zillions of ski lifts or gondolas. Many of them are open in summer for tourists. Gondolas go up from downtown Innsbruck way up. A restaurant there is perfect for ham radio. One extra attraction is personnel; most of Read more
In July 2025 I went to Australia and New Zealand. Of course, Elecraft KX2 radio went with me. Since QRP is not much power and nearly all contacts for Australia are DX, QTH selection is important, at best over salt water in the direction of DX. In Darwin Australia (region Read more
For many years my family travels to St George Island for the end-of-year vacation. I always take a radio and at times try to make an effort to participate in the Stew Perry contest. This time it was too much drama – please read. http://no9e.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Perry_StGeorge_25.pdf
To my surprise I scored #1 USA in CQ 160 contest in the SO Assisted category. See an official article. The last time a station in GA scored as #1 was W8JI in 2008 with his tremendous station. The contest was influenced by a geomagnetic disturbance and the conditions were Read more
I figured out why my EME setup was not working. After fixing the antennas, by mistake I fed them out of phase. Instead of getting 1+1=2 I got 1-1=0. I still made one EME QSO when the antenna was off, because out of phase the antenna has peaks about 20 Read more