[FARC] NVIS Field Day

[Rolan O. Clark]

Bob,

Very neat !! My antenna theory, if you can talk to someone its a good 
antenna !!

tnx,

73

de

rolan

w3fdk
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Moroney" <windbrkr at erols.com>
To: "FARC Mail List" <farc at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: June 29, 2008 22:40
Subject: [FARC] NVIS Field Day


>
> 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
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