Radio On The Beach
Last week Hannah and myself spent a few days in Lakes Entrance. While we were down there we were without internet access, but I did take some notes of the first day:
Drove down to lake tyres beach, and set up our whip antenna, to see what was out there. The whip is a fairly simple thing with elements for 80/40 (depending on loading coil at base) and 20 metres.
Worked with some difficulty vi2bv90 (only got a 2/5) on 40 metres, the whip we decided wasn’t working so well so we set up the vertical built out of a squid pole and some plumbing parts.
Now this vertical is an interesting thing, based around a “squid pole” and a few plumbing pipe, we didn’t set the thing to it’s entire hight, we may do that tomorrow, but it was to say the least a marked improvement. we heard much more than we were hearing with the whip.
So we went to 20metres, and worked a station in Japan, who gave us a 5/5 (we gave him a 5/7) and it was amazing, here was a guy running an Yaesu DX 9000 with a Yaesu quadra amp, and a 6 element tribander, all up running one Kilowatt!
We were easly able to work him with only 100 watts, and the vertical.
I guess it says something for working right on the coast, where the salt water lakes create for us a brilliant ground plane to work against.
Other than a little sun burn and eating way too much a very successful day
~Ivy
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