[ADXA] directionally challenged

[Dennis Schaefer]

Which way is up?

During the DX contest, I turned the beam SE and worked ZF5T quickly on
several bands.  They were booming in, with a big signal.  Saturday morning,
I noticed  EU was weaker than I expected and ZF was coming in better from
about 60 degrees.  Sticking with BIC guidelines, I couldn’t be bothered to
go outside and actually look at the antenna.

I tried unsuccessfully to work 4U1UN, a band counter on 10M.  The signal
was best around 300 degrees.  I finally went out and looked,  and
discovered the antenna was off course.  EU was much stronger when the
indicator showed NW.  This was more than calibration could fix, so I
corrected the rotator scale with a dry erase pen and will deal with it
soon.  (I did bag 4U1UN once I got this figured out).

Since my dead trees have been removed, I can put the Pennant receive
antenna back up.  Last year, my main noise source was to the South so I put
the null toward that direction.  The South noise source has disappeared.  I
never did figure out where it was coming from.  Now the noise is from the
power pole that is to the North.  Putting the null to the North is not
ideal for DX but I think I would get the best S/N by doing that.   I need
to figure out a new ideal location for the pennant and how to steer the
null.  The weather is not cooperating with this.

Maybe I should give the pole a few whacks with the BFH.  Although I have
never done that, nope, never, I have heard of it being done.  But again,
I’ve never done anything like that, no sir!  Did I mention that I would
never do anything like that, and if I did, I would be sure nobody saw me :)

73,
Dennis/RZ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/adxa/attachments/20251204/39a44706/attachment-0001.html>