Almost two weeks of activity soon comes to and end. It has been great fun and I thank everyone for good ears and for following me to new bands.
My conclusions are the following:
100 Watts is good enough for reaching most regions of the world. An amplifier would have been useful for Europe and US East Coast.
Vertical wire antenna on Spiderbeam 12 meter glass fibre pole with two elevated and tuned radials is an effective antenna, easy to erect. The location 30 meter from the sea water was also sufficient.
My other vertical for 12, 15 and 17 meters (wire along fishing rod with 4.5 meter length) was an acceptable solution for those bands, but due to longer distance from salt water (about 60 meters) it did not work as well as the 30/40 meter vertical.
Take off in directions 0-180 degrees was excellent. Between 180 and 360 degrees less good due to lack of sea take off as well as some mountains in that direction.
For Europe I would have needed a yagi or spiderbeam type of rotatable antenna at minimum 10 meter height. An amplifier only would not have made a difference as reception of European signals were not good enough with existing antenna setup.
Inverted Vee dipoles for 10 and 20 meters at limited height (7 meters) on spider beam pole was not good enough.
I should have brought my 18 meter spider beam pole and used very light weight wires and ropes for dipoles and should have guyed the top of the 18 meter antenna so I could at least reach 14-15 meter as fixing point for dipoles. However, 18 meter spider beam pole is a heavier pole and with longer transport length (2 meters) compared to the light and shorter 12 meter version. The gusty winds at times and bad soil for guy anchors would have been a challenge.
80 and 160 meters would have been possible using a 18 meter spider beam pole as support. Reception on 80 meters using 40 meter antenna proved that the surrounding area was less noisy than predicted. In general,reception was excellent on all bands provided that my pirate IPad charger was disconnected. It gave a S5 noise level on 12, 15 and 17 meters. On other bands no problems.
Working from Vietnam was fun. It is not an extremely rare locations but pileups are good enough even with 100 Watts.
My conclusions are the following:
100 Watts is good enough for reaching most regions of the world. An amplifier would have been useful for Europe and US East Coast.
Vertical wire antenna on Spiderbeam 12 meter glass fibre pole with two elevated and tuned radials is an effective antenna, easy to erect. The location 30 meter from the sea water was also sufficient.
My other vertical for 12, 15 and 17 meters (wire along fishing rod with 4.5 meter length) was an acceptable solution for those bands, but due to longer distance from salt water (about 60 meters) it did not work as well as the 30/40 meter vertical.
Take off in directions 0-180 degrees was excellent. Between 180 and 360 degrees less good due to lack of sea take off as well as some mountains in that direction.
For Europe I would have needed a yagi or spiderbeam type of rotatable antenna at minimum 10 meter height. An amplifier only would not have made a difference as reception of European signals were not good enough with existing antenna setup.
Inverted Vee dipoles for 10 and 20 meters at limited height (7 meters) on spider beam pole was not good enough.
I should have brought my 18 meter spider beam pole and used very light weight wires and ropes for dipoles and should have guyed the top of the 18 meter antenna so I could at least reach 14-15 meter as fixing point for dipoles. However, 18 meter spider beam pole is a heavier pole and with longer transport length (2 meters) compared to the light and shorter 12 meter version. The gusty winds at times and bad soil for guy anchors would have been a challenge.
80 and 160 meters would have been possible using a 18 meter spider beam pole as support. Reception on 80 meters using 40 meter antenna proved that the surrounding area was less noisy than predicted. In general,reception was excellent on all bands provided that my pirate IPad charger was disconnected. It gave a S5 noise level on 12, 15 and 17 meters. On other bands no problems.
Working from Vietnam was fun. It is not an extremely rare locations but pileups are good enough even with 100 Watts.
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