[ADXA] 160m from city lot - various ways to get the job done and succeed

[HamOP]

Excellent thoughts about 160m by Jay!
   In Hot Springs in the 1970s I had an inverted L, fed at bottom with my coax from the shack shorted at the rig and hooked to the center connector opening. The ground was only at the inverted L about 2 feet off the ground and NO radials but did have 3 three foot ground rods equally spaced about 3 foot from the feed point.
   Then in Little Rock I shunt fed my tower which had a lot of top capacity with 3 element 20m Telrex monobander and a 28/21mc duo band above that. I shunt fed for both 80 and 160m, seems like the 80 feed was at a 33 feet feed point off of my 65 foot tower and 160 feed was at about 55 feet, this varies with ground, surrounding objects etc , but is tuned out by the large series capacitor at the bottom in a plastic cover box. My vertical feed line was about a foot from the tower using PVCs for support. My feed point cap also had a grounded capacitor on the output side of the series feed cap for fine tuning. Main thing is the series cap, bigger the better. I loaned it to K5UR about the time I move to Paris and he did SO well with it, then Rick burst into great, tall towers and ability to do many things on 160m as Joel did later.  
   Since I had already worked about 108 countries from 1973 to December 1980 and got DXCC #18 in December 1980, I slowed down some in 1981-82 due to a job change and being out of town a lot and prepared to move to Paris in 1983, but I added to my totals slowly. In Paris I decided to just have a simple 160m inverted V at 60 feet and it did “OK”. No more middle of night calls to or from 4-5 our us 160m guys who were chasing hard in the 1970s. Got some rare ones by schedules made, working them on 80m first then going quickly to 160m and some skeds set up a day or two in advance. They all showed up, especially in Central and South America. Helped to have low SS numbers during part of this time with less D layer ion adsorption and signals coming thru so much stronger. I gave a couple of talks at ham gathering back then on the D layer “timing” for schedules and 160/80 activity.
   So, Jay brings back great memories, but I can not seem to get up at MN-6AM to listen and chase on 160m anymore. I am stuck on 215  confirmed now on 160m with only 6-7 new ones in the past 5 years, just a low 160/80m inverted V at 36 feet since 1996! In 93-late 95 I had a ½ wave hand carried rotatable sloper off my 100 foot tower at that time and worked so many on 160m.Thank God for the energy level I had in the 1970s and those late night “assistive” phone calls that were made, waking up my upset wife at 2AM.. 
   Good day to ADXA members and stay safe and work ‘em on 160m now since we are still in the low SSN during this early phase of cycle 25 but moving upwards. 73,
San    

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Jay Bromley
Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2020 9:25 PM
To: adxa
Subject: [ADXA] DXing 160m from city lot

HI All,
A few days ago there was mention of 160m DXCC from a city lot.  Pat W5VY mentioned the noise problem being in the city and it is a huge problem.  Getting worse all the time including out in the country!        

For what it is worth DXCC on 160 is doable on a city lot.  Interesting, at times challenging, but very satisfying in the end!  Two of us from Fort Smith managed DXCC on 160m from a city lot using mainly loaded slopers up around 50 feet or less!.  K5JUC  Jim, got his 160m DXCC first.   Let me tell you those were small city lots, hi.  Since Jimmy and I lived within a block or two of each other, we would QRM each other adding to the challenge.  Receivers back then were primitive by today’s standards!  It took me about another 10 years to finish DXCC on the top band.  More on that down below.   ETC 
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