Interesting and informative post, Gary. It seems we live about 35 miles
apart. I am in Kingston. I can appreciate your terrain. I have tried
several 70 cm skeds and finally had success on one into north GA. I usually
tell anyone who asks that I am blocked in every direction except up. Of
course, that isn't all bad since one of my main interests is 2 meter EME. I
visited one of the locals on top of one of these hills a while back, and he
had an S-9 noise level on 2 while I had very quiet condx at my QTH.

The narrow bandwidth on 160 isn't much of a problem since I primarily operate
cw on HF. I began chasing a DXCC on 80 CW earlier this year.

73,

Phil - N1KI


In article , am
wrote:
Hi Phil

The bandwidth on 160 was so narrow it was basically only good on one
single frequency for me. Which was OK, I set it for a specific
frequency I used twice a week.

All of my other 160 work was done on that Linear Loaded Inverted Vee
that I put up. I had pigtails on it and set each leg at a different
frequency and it still worked OK for me.

As far as the HF9V I was and am still very impressed with how well
this antenna has worked for me. Especially in the confines of my
suburban yard with antenna restrictions up the wazoo.

But FINALLY I moved to a new state, I live in a valley between the
Cumberland Plateau and the Smoky Mountains, due to the hill behind my
house, sunup isn't until around 9AM. But it is a very high hill and
THAT is where I plan on building my antenna farm.
I've made many calculations and studied the lay of the land several
times, it looks like the ideal spot for this area.
My only concern will be the coax loss in running over 600 feet of coax
up the side of the hill. I would need 9913 for the upper bands.

I'm also looking into the possibly of using perhaps a 6 inch wide
ladder line. But I'm not savvy enough to know if I can run coax out
of the shack to ladder line for 500 feet then back to coax to feed the
antenna towers. This is something I will have to study up on again
before attempting it.

I may try a trick a neighbor about a mile away has done. We have
extremely tall poplar trees here. He cleaned the branches and topped
one of these poplars and then installed a 25 foot tall mast at the top
of one of them for his VHF/UHF antennas. He said it's been up there
for over 5 years and the new branches that sprouted have not come
close to the antenna yet. So that might be one alternative for me to
try also.

The HF9V will be ground mounted at the dividing line between my front
lot and my back lot, which is only partially up the back hill in a
flat clearing where I have plenty of room to run my overkill radials.
At my last home in St. Louis, I had over 3,500 feet of radials, some
extending through neighbors yards until they reached the streets on
the other side of their houses.
And, where backyards meet, many had those stockade fences and they
allowed me to run dipoles across their backyards about 10 feet above
the fence lines by installing 25 foot poles affixed to the fence
posts. POed the telephone and cable TV people who had to watch for my
lines when working on the utility pole mounted services within their
easements. I was not within their easement so they couldn't just
knock them down and leave them laying on the ground, hi hi.....

It was so long ago, I don't remember which bands these apply to, but
those horizontal metal strips on the antenna. On the upper one (after
installing the 160 coil) I took a pair of alligator clips and a piece
of wire about 4 inches long (2 inches each side) and experimented by
making this top bar a little wider. I do remember it worked for
whatever reason I was doing it. So I drilled two small holes in each
end and laced a new copper wire through this allowing about 1-3/4 inch
extending beyond the natural length of this horizontal antenna member.
But I believe this may have been to use an out of ham band frequency
for our emergency communications. The antenna was up for several
years, so you tend to forget things you had to do when it was
initially installed.
I never had problems with it, so I never messed with it.

It seems there are some photos on my web page somewhere, but I don't
know if they include the HF9V or not.
The URL is http://archimedes.galilei.com/raiar if you want to have a
look around and see. I'm quite lax on updating my web page, and it
seems I never remove anything, just add from time to time. So there's
no telling what you may find there.

TTUL - 73+ de Gary - KGØZP



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