Late last week I tested my antenna mount components on a single elevated radial 20m vertical. Saturday morning I added a parasitic element 13 feet away to form a vertical beam fixed at 51°. The ARRL International DX Phone contest was going on so I decided to participate as a single operator QRP station. Cranked the power on the IC-7300 to 5W and started having some fun. I worked a bit on Saturday afternoon, briefly on Saturday evening & morning then again on Sunday afternoon. I ended up with 36 contacts in 21 countries. Here is a breakdown of the QSO’s by band and by Continent:
Contacts on 40m, 15m & 10m were made with the S9V31 vertical and the 20m contacts with the 20m beam.
15m was my best band with relatively easy contacts mainly in the Caribbean and Central America. Brief band opening on 10m yielded a couple of QSO’s. 40m was best for distance with EU and JA contacts in the evening and early morning. 20m remains a difficult band for me. All my contacts on 20m were into mainly into the Caribbean. Bigger pile-ups make this band a challenge on QRP.
The 2 element vertical beam gives about 3dBi gain over the vertical alone. Likely just not enough to make a difference. I would have likely had better results with the Inverted-V at 30 1/2 wavelength height.
Once again, lots of fun making contacts on 5W. It is still thrilling to make an 8000 mile QSO on QRP. Thinking I need to work on upping my game on QRP as this is a fun contest niche.
Adventures in Amateur Radio 