[Elecraft] 160m activity?

[TR, WB6TMY]

Sadly, I must agree with Jim Brown,  K9YC.

By the way Jim, it was a pleasure working you the other day.  With a 
two letter call and a big signal like your's I mistakenly had you 
pegged as another "DX-Snob."  Randy, you might keep an ear open for 
Jim, he's a very nice guy with an excellent station.

Randy, I am on 160 quite regularly and it is fairly rare to find a 
QSO.  The only way the rest of us are going to ever get any use out 
of the band is to use it and generate some CQ's.  Otherwise the 
DX'ers will continue having their way.  The other morning I was lucky 
enough to hook up with K8MP, Delaware OH and KD8BZY, Poda? WA.  My 
friend Joe had a good signal & was solid copy, whereas I never did 
figure out Randy's QTH for sure.  Anyway, both good ragchew stations 
and close enough to you that either one should be easy copy.  Another 
good guy on 160 fairly often is K6XK, Rolfe IA.  There are others, 
but you have to be persistant.  It helps if you have a good antenna, 
in fact as Jim said, a good antenna is vital to success.

Living on a city lot 90' X 60' with all the noise attendant, I've had 
the most success with a Ground Plane on my roof using a Butternut 
HF-2V with the 160 meter add-on module.  I have the top hat and three 
radials that go to the edge of the roof, then "wrap-around" the yard, 
either on the back yard fence or in the front yard just running along 
the eves.  While it certainly is not in a league with what Jim, W9YC, 
has, I have NO trouble working the East Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska 
during contests such as the one we had two weeks ago.  I am running 
power though, 300W on a pair of 811A's.  Don't expect too much on 5 
watts unless your antenna is very much better than mine.  As Jim 
says, the noise will eat your signal.  Another nice thing about a 
vertically polarized signal is the ground wave.  You'll find working 
100 miles in the daytime at high noon is no trick at all, and you can 
do that QRP.  The secret of course is the very low noise on 160 when 
there is no skip.  Some years ago I use to have a regular sked with 
W6TYP in San Jose 100+ miles from Santa Rosa on AM.  I was running a 
6L6 crystal oscillator plate modulated.  You know, if you modulate 
very deeply on negative peaks, the oscillator will start to become 
unstable, so about the best you can do is 50% modulation.  That's 
real QRP!  12 Watts carrier, 6 Watts peak double side-band, 3 Watts 
peak each single side-band X 50% modulation!  Hi Hi  Of course 
finding anyone to work within 100 miles on daytime ground-wave is a 
nearly insurmountable challenge.

Anyway Randy, good luck & stick with it.

Very 73,

TR, WB6TMY
_____________

Message: 33
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:57:44 -0800
From: "Jim Brown" <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com>
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] 160m activity?

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 20:48:48 -0600, Randy Moore wrote:

 >I only hear people working DX.  All the CQs are
 >"CQ DX" and so far no one has answered my CQs.

Sadly, that's very much the nature of 160. Some call it "the
gentlemen's band." I think a better name for it is "the DX snobs
band."

73,

Jim Brown K9YC
Santa Cruz, CA