On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 17:58:44 -0400, Buck wrote:

[snip]

I have used experimental antennas that theoretically won't 'work' and
made contacts.

Me too.

When I was 16, and a newly minted Conditional class, my BC-342
receiver broke (I still have it and it's still broken...gotta fix that
someday). I had a Heathkit DX-100 transmitter, which covered 160
meters. So I took an old tube type car radio, which in those days
used a 262 KHz i-f and permeability tuning, and tweaked the inductors
so it would tune the 160-meter band. I acquired a 262 KHz crystal and
built an oscillator that I just let leak into the receiver for a bfo
so I could copy CW.

My bedroom (shack) had steel casement windows and I had removed a pane
and replaced it with a sheet of aluminum (no access to plastic in
those days or coax, I was poor) with some ceramic feed thru
insulators. I ran a single wire from the rig to near the top of a
Eucalyptus tree (talk about dying for an antenna). I don't remember
the length, maybe 100 feet, or the ground system; a single rod I
think.

My first and only contact with that setup was DX; a VE7. The logs for
those days are long gone so he's not in the current computer log. But
if he was I would have a grand total of five countries worked on 160;
about one every ten years [g].