Subject: [ILQSO] NVIS/cloudwarmers, & other stuff

[Samuel Saladino]

Chuck, I'll be running an NVIS Dipole at 7' on 40 meters tomorrow.  I used a, well best way to picture it is a 40 meter inverted vee, but had it on it's side with all legs at 7' during the Wisconsin QSO Party earlier in the year.  The close spaced angle was pointed towards Wisconsin, and I'm only about 2 blocks into Illinois from the Wisconsin State Line.  Using that I was able to contact stations as close as Rock County, which is 2 blocks north of me, the station I talked to was less than 20 miles away, and managed to get contacts in all but about 8 counties.  The only block of counties I had no contact with were the far northern Tier.  However I think it may be due to nobody up there working the same frequencies I was at the time, because a station 1 county south of that tier  mentioned I had the biggest signal he'd heard during the entire contest.  (Running only 100 watts here.)  My meter read him as a 10db over 9.  
 
I started using NVIS antennas while living in Oregon, and participating with a regional emergency communications group.  It was the only way I had reliable contact between many of the other operators due to the need to bounce the signal over the tops of the mountains and into valleys around the region.  Too many mountain etc for direct signal contacts. I lived in the SW corner of Oregon and consistanly made contacts with other stations in California, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada. The antenna also proved valuable as many times those running normal height dipoles and verticals couldn't hear some of the stations I could.  Why it seemed to make a difference on receive I'm not sure, unless with the configuration acting like a 2 element beam I was able to capture those signals bouncing off the clouds more strongly than verticals or simple dipoles.  
 
73
Sam  NW9T