Hawaii on 20m, by accident
I was just listening around 20m before dinner time,
and I heard Bill Kollenbaum (aka k4xs) of the Big Island Contest
Group, calling CQ for the first time. I answered,
and he answered.
No big deal, I thought. Then I wondered why
the log showed red buttons against DCC, ITU and CQ zone. And
then I looked at the QRZ page antenna photo and read more
closely.
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This explains why he can just drop onto 20m and
sound the bloke next door. With an enormous antenna array like
that, he is the VK3MO of Hawaii. |
"The new antenna system is a three high switchable
stack of OptiBeam tribanders (94/56/26 feet), a 4 element 40
meter OptiBeam Yagi (84 feet), and two A-3WS WARC antennas
stacked in phase, (66/35 feet) with the top one having the 30
meter mod.
The station sits at an elevation of 1100 feet and
is about one mile from the Pacific with a huge downward slope to
the Europe, North America, most of South America, and Asia. " |