Archive - October 2008

JOTA with GB1DSG

29th October 2008
M0YOM
M0XXT Archive
Add comment

Massive success this year with the new antenna, generating huge pile-ups world-wide. We shall never go near 80m again for JOTA. 20m is the band that synchronises extremely well with passing Scouting messages around the world, particularly if you have a technically proficient station and crew.

I notice Tim (M0URX) has done a little write up of this event here:

Needless to say, if having ones Cub pack sending their greetings message to the Father in Law to the Crown Prince of Brunei isn’t one-upmanship, I don’t know what is 🙂

It is just for me to say thanks to Tim, James and Terry for helping me put on such a sterling event. The QSL cards have started arriving already! Fabulous.

73

Callum.

CQWW SSB 2008 – M0XXT Report

25th October 2008
M0YOM
M0XXT Archive
Add comment

This year, James and I ran M0XXT at the Scout Hut using a pair of XXT Mega Loops; a full size 160m version and a half-sized one which suited the top end of 80m and 10m. Full-sized Mega Loops don’t work on 10m. I ran out of time to put up a TX vertical for top band, even though I did finally finish making it ready for tuning by Saturday morning during my “off” times at night. Another job for next year.

RF was via one of our FT1000MP radios and amplified by an ACOM. A pair of Dell PCs running N1MM did the logging. We networked the PCs for disaster recovery purposes and used the second copy of N1MM on the spare PC a couple of times when RF shut down the run machine. We were Multi-Single.

The antennas really worked miracles, showing almost unbelievable gain which in the main distil to 6 equally spaced compass fingers or lobes – with the main RF being squirted at around 290 degrees (since it’s slightly twisted off it’s X axis due to the perfect location of the local oak trees for USA propagation). I won’t bore you with the compass bearings, it is suffice to say that these RF fingers cover most high density population areas of the globe. The whole topic of these XXT Mega Loops needs a chapter to themselves and as I write this on Monday evening, I can report that this afternoon I ran a huge pile-up to the west coast US at about 16:00z, at one point switching the amplifier off and continuing to run the pile up with 10 watts (!) which reduced our average incoming signal report to 5 and 7 from 20dB over S9. Even on 40m, the gain figures are healthy with 5dB at 10 degree take off angles to the US. 80m is just a big bubble of RF but with the antenna at 90 feet elevation, at least the bubble has some flatness to it. Same with 160m – hence the idea of a massive vertical.

Read More

Read More