I got the antenna up in the air and 20 radials in the back yard, got on the air, and on the first night I worked Russia, Czech Republic, Spain, Quebec, and Italy! What a nice surprise for my introduction into HF. I’m using a 4:1 Unun, and outputting 100 watts from my FT-857D.

I have worked 53 DX entities, and 47 states. I don’t think it is beyond the realm of possibilities of getting DXCC and WAS by year’s end (only thing that may hold me up with QSL delivery times). The antenna may be built for 40M, but I’ve worked the majority of my contacts on higher frequencies. It works very well on 30M, 20M, 17M, 15M, and 10M. I’ve made two contacts on 6M during Sporadic-E openings, so even though this isn’t a good choice of 6M it does work. I can even get it to tune up on 80M in narrow band segments but have only worked the digital modes on that band. The thing won’t tune up 160M (no surprise there).

I think it goes without saying that a good ground radial system is important for vertical antennas. I spent more money on the radials and radial plate than the antenna itself. I plan on putting more radials down in the ground later for improved performance. I mowed the lawn with the mower at its lowest setting and bought a couple of bags of “landscaping staples” from Lowe’s to push the 14# wires tight into the ground. My yard slopes and is curved so I needed a lot of staples. I tried the biodegradable staples from DX Engineering, but they didn’t work too well for me, almost half of them snapped due to the compacted soil in most of my yard.

Anyhow, I’m really happy with the setup and wanted to give an example of how well it works for chasing DX.

73!
WA5DA

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