[FARC] NVIS Field Day

[Bob Moroney]

With ARRL Field Day this weekend, and its guarantee of MANY stations on 
the air looking for contacts, I finally seized the opportunity to put up 
a "real" 40m NVIS antenna to see what it could do. 

This antenna consisted of about 66 ft. of radiating wire, stretched out 
in a more-or-less straight line about 3 ft. off the ground among big and 
small tree trunks and other vegetation.  The wire was fed in the middle 
as a dipole via 50 ohm coax to the transceiver. 

The support for the radiating elements was provided by seven of Southern 
States' finest electric fence posts.  (These are the black plastic ones 
with a 6-inch steel spike on the business end and a tab sticking out 
down there to help you stomp them into the ground.) 

In a leap of faith, I also rolled out about 70 ft. of nondescript copper 
wire at ground level  directly below the dipole, to act as a 
"reflector".  This was hopefully to direct more of my signal straight 
up, so it could bounce back down in a close-in scatter pattern.

Results?  Not too bad.  In a couple of hours of very casual operating 
with 50 to 100W out SSB, and interrupted by rain showers on Sunday 
afternoon, I contacted 14 other stations on 40m, in MD/DC, VA, NJ, PA 
and WV, with little or no difficulty.

Of course, this close-in communicating (~300 mile radius) is what 40m 
NVIS is supposed to do best.  (And I heard many more stations farther 
North, South and West, but I was either unable or too impatient to try 
to break through their pile-ups.)

What surprised me more was that I was also able to contact folks on 
15m.  This makes some sense given that a 40m antenna will also resonate 
on 15m, but the fact about my antenna being 3 ft. off the ground made 
the additional 4 contacts with IN, MI, IL, and NH on 15m pretty 
surprising, at least to me.  (And again, as with 40m, I had solid copy 
on quite a few more stations than I was actually able to contact.)

One really interesting thing was that almost the whole time, while many 
folks were complaining about heavy QRM/QRN, I heard very little of it, 
simply because my antenna was so low to the ground.

Conventional wisdom:  Get that antenna up in the air! 
NVIS wisdom:  Get it down!

73, Bob K9CMR