The Antenna is at the top of the hill. Its like mounting a 1/4 Vert at the top of a 100ft tower ...can you say height advantage! Started with a vertical element 65' and 4x Radials 76'. The Antenna goes up vertically about 40ft the horizontal for the remainder. The Marconi Antenna only radiates from the bottom 20% of the element and the remainder is simply there for loading. Initial SWR checks found the null at 2.9 MHz ... super way lower then the optimum 3.5 MHz. Tuned the Vert Element is 4 stages , 2', 4', 3', 3' ending up with a "vertical radiator" 53' in length. Now the SWR null is at 3.55 Mhz and is running about 1.3:1 . Next up is adding another 8 X 76' radial then if needed I will try to tune the 12 radials for optimum VSWR.
Now for the fun part. Today 80 Meters was more or less 100% dead ... very little if anything heard just a couple of weak signals. I was playing around at 3.550 MHz and to my surprise someone came back with a Carrier. I sent my call sign and VE2HOG came back to me with a 579 ... he was around a 539-559.
Chad was bearing 15.7 deg NNE and 377.4 km away. I was thrilled with the signal report!
D Layer absorption during the day is more or less total. During the daylight hours, a station in middle or high latitudes using 100 watts and a simple dipole antenna can expect a maximum communication range of 200 miles/300 km. Obviously the Vertical was working its magic look forward to try it out after dark when the D Layer absorption is more or less gone!
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