[NLRS] Location, location, location

[Duane Grotophorst]

Jason,

Some comments inline below from a station out in the
sticks:

--- Jason Godfrey <godfrey@sol.aptsolutions.com>
wrote:

 We are considering
> two choices:
>   a) My house in Inver Grove Heights (near Concord),
> which has 80+ foot "hills"
> both to the east and west. (I'm in a valley.) or

Depending on how close these hills actually are to the
station location they could be significant problem
(for sure if 1/4 mile away or less). If they are a
fair distance away (1+ miles) then they won't have
nearly as major of an impact as close-in hills will.

>   b) A trip to a cabin 15 miles west of Little
> Falls, MN (en25). I need to 
> take a closer at a topo map, but it looks like more
> favorable terrain. 

If it is truly up in the clear and also where you can
get the antennas above everything - trees, buildings
etc. then this may actually be a better location.

> We will have a modest station, 100 watts into most
> likely a 3 element 6m beam,
> a 5 (or 3) element 2m beam, and a 6 element 440
> beam, all for SSB. 

Be sure to use the best feedline you can find or
afford no matter where you decide to setup. While
these antennas are quite modest they will play well
provided you get the RF to and from them with a good
low loss coax.

> Not being avid VHF'ers, we're not really sure how to
> evaluate the tradeoff
> between being in a hole vs. being 100 miles from the
> population center.

I'm ~150 miles from the Chicago area, ~90 miles from
Milwaukee, ~200 miles from Minneapolis. All of them
are quite workable with stations running comparable
antennas like you describe and 100W or so. So in the
end 100Mi is not truly a big deal for 2M SSB/CW work,
but then I'm biased because of having been out here
the boonies all along. I for one would really like to
work EN25 in the Jan contest, EN34 and EN35's are easy
to come by down here in western EN53, EN25's always
seem to be a bit scarce :).

Bottom line is determining exactly how much better the
EN25 location truly is for being in the clear. If it
is minimally so then the metro area clearly wins, but
if it is dramatically better I'd opt for it rather
than the metro area. Also be sure consider local noise
sources, an RFI noise problem will make any otherwise
good location worthless.

73,
Duane
N9DG
EN53bj

A BC'er who likes to work lots of NLRS'ers in contests
:).


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