After operating the CQ DX contest this past weekend using the 15m Moxon, I just took down and inspected the antenna. I had lowered it on Monday and it was subjected to some heavy rain during the night Tuesday. Today I disassembled the antenna completely and found that it was in very good shape. The epoxy and string reinforcements to the spreaders worked great and there was no sign of cracking. All in all it looks really good.
My last post detailed my three-band fan dipole fail in association with the CQ WW DX contest last weekend. I didn’t attempt a start until late Saturday morning, and I was just not being heard operating on QRP with this antenna. Time was passing on and I nearly gave up on operating during the contest. It was nearly 1pm when I finally decided to try and get the 15m Moxon on the air. Weather was beautiful but there was a bit of a breeze which was a concern based on previous experiences. The only thing I needed to do was remove some mast sections from the Spider Pole and make sure the Aluminum angle support was firmly inserted. It took about an hour to get the antenna deployed at about 23 ft height and pointed towards the EU.
I came inside the shack and did a quick SWR check before I turned the power down to 5W. My first call was answering a station in Italy that responded on the first try! This was followed by QSO’s in Slovenia, Martinique, Russia…well you get the point. The Moxon made all the difference and made the contest a lot of fun to work. Within half an hour I had already reached half the QSO’s I made on this contest last year using a half-square. I operated on Saturday mainly on 15m until I had about 33 QSO’s. I woke up early on Sunday and made a few QSO’s on 40m to Asia then switched between 15m, 10m and 20m for the rest of the morning. I finished up early on Sunday afternoon but here is my coverage map of QSO’s:
Here are my contacts by Band and by Continent:
Here are my previous results running QRP, Single operator assisted (2022 scores need to be confirmed):
Year
Score
QSO’s
Zones
Countries
Antenna
NA Rank
World Rank
Entries
2020
1767
24
13
18
S9V31 Vertical
6
35
43
2021
1184
21
14
18
Half Square + vertical
5
28
32
2022
8,576
57
21
43
15m Moxon + vertical
2
17
23
I expect that the ranking will be better this year than last but I do expect more competition this year due to improved band conditions so time will tell the final results.
Salvaged a great weekend of QRP DX working the contest and once again confirmed that antenna choice is everything and should be tailored to your mode of operation.
I was working slowly on how to add a 10m element to the 15m Moxon in preparation for the CQ WW DX Contest this past weekend. I ran into some mechanical problems and work got even slower. After thinking over it, I decided to try and finish the 20-15-10m fan dipole I had started some time back. I had already printed the dipole center and spreaders so I though why not? Gain at 33ft would be a respectable 6dBi and should give me some help running QRP during the contest.
The antenna went up on Friday morning. Tuning was way off when I started which I tracked down to some feedline issues. After replacing the feedline, I started seeing the appropriate SWR dips but they were not centered on the bands. I decided to try it anyway with the antenna tuner and made some test contacts at 5W.
I was unable to work the start of the contest on Friday night but thought I’d start in the morning when the 15m band opens up to the EU. I look out the window and… spaghetti on the ground. I raise the antenna and sort out the wires. The antenna hears beautifully with many, many signals. Unfortunately, no one can hear me. I bring the whole thing down again and now here it sits on the shack floor:
In retrospect, the spreaders should have been longer and tuning this antenna turns out to be a fairly painful process. I would have been better off with the 44ft doublet…
Adventures in Amateur Radio 