Chapter 6

16 April 2006 - Happy Easter!

N3OYA is now on 20m fer sure! I made myself a vertical.

You know those green (or blue) plastic tarps you can get for picnics or your backyard? They've got aluminum poles for support. Each section is about four feet long. I started sticking sections together until I got longer than 16.5 feet, screwed them together with self-tapping sheet-metal screws, and cut off the rest.

The feedpoint is about six inches above the ground, and is comprised of a wooden dowel stuck a good two feet up into the mast and a good six inches into the base section. Sheet-metal screws hold it all together.

It loads effortlessly all over the 20m band. I tried like hell to make a contact with it, but 20m has been deader than a very dead thing all day. I heard - dimly - EA8/DL6FAW around dusk, but he went QRT thirty seconds after I found him. I heard a few other stations, including another 6Y5, but all everyone was talking about was how crappy the band was. Even the Maritime Mobile Net on 14.300 was dead; maybe one or two stations.

But tomorrow is another day! Well, Tuesday is another day; I'm working twelve hours tomorrow.