"Sal M. O'Nella" wrote in message ...

I try to take a new antenna to Field Day every year. This year I decided on
the Moxon, AKA the Moxon Rectangle. I signed up for 10m Phone, figuring I
could build that antenna and it would be small enough to be transportable.
I began reading about the Moxon design a few years ago but this was my first
time to construct one.

snip

The antenna worked as advertised but band conditions were bizarre. At
first, I worked a half-dozen nearby stations on direct wave. Next, I
started hearing KH6RS about 5-5 off the back of the antenna and worked him
easily. He was on the band virtually all the time. I could sometimes hear
the NA stations he was working but just barely. I logged a few other Hawaii
stations -- but not much else.

After about four hours of that ****, I tuned a strong beacon station and
watched his signal strength for a while, observing little or no variance. I
had a turning rope on my antenna and I found I could peak the beacon at S-5
to the Northeast and null it to S-1 to the Southwest. This told me the
Moxon's vaunted F/B ratio was present and it should be working. My compadre
on 15m wasn't having much better luck. It was all very frustrating.

Eventually, I went home to sleep and came back the next morning. I began to
operate again around 8:30 Local to much the same nonsense. The band changed
shortly after 9:00 AM. I started hearing the Pacific Northwest coming in.
I easily worked about a dozen stations in Washington and Oregon. One of
them was even 5-over, off the side. For the next hour, FD was like
bowling -- I just kept knocking them over! I would have kept working but
people were coming over like a parade, all wanting to talk to me, so I hung
up the mike shortly after 10:00.

We logged over a mesh network with N3FJP's Field Day 4.2. The only hitch
was the program's demand for the registration number on two of the client
computers. Our FD chairman had to make a forty-minute R/T home to get the
number. During multiple dry runs at his house, the problem NEVER appeared
once, so it was a complete surprise. I'm pretty sure our chairman is going
to ask N3FJP about it.

"Sal"
(KD6VKW)