antenna build

was VERY excited on how the ground rod just sunk itself into the dirt! No sweat, no blisters, no hammering!

I'm dokin on 11m cuz I gat no ticket.

Had a 20mile local SSB shot where the guy told me to pull up a chair.
:)

I'm in MA so 'way' up north is NH, VT, ME, Can.
I can get locals out ~5mi in that direction though. - Which is why I was wondering if i was just getting bounced over for long range propagation.

My angle of radiation is very low - Vertical dipole (specs above). And i'm little over 1/4 wave off the ground with the mount.
-wasn't expecting super performance - just wondering if i'm getting bounced over.

I WFH so, it's usually on....listening to trucker talk.
:)
Gimme a 'how boutcha' daveyburt on 19 and we'll flip around from there if we contact.

It's too bad you're "down there". There's a ton of us on 38 LSB but most of the guys are inside the 495 belt. (I talk to them mobile a lot) About half of the guys have their ticket but switch between bands. DX has been rolling in and out on Sporadic E, nothing super strong like the openings we had last weekend though, but I've heard St. Croix and Jamaica a few times this week...

-Mike
 
During propagation conditions, I hear folks from the south talking to folks from Maine/NH/Canada. While I seem to get local northerly reception, I can never hear the folks from way up north. Are their signals bouncing over me?
Make yourself an azimuthal (great circle) map centered on your location,
with a radius of 500-1000mi.
Because maybe (maybe) your sense of distance is warped,
and you don't realize how far (or how close) Canada is compared to Teh South.

was VERY excited on how the ground rod just sunk itself into the dirt! No sweat, no blisters, no hammering!
Did you plant it pretty near the house?

I had a well drilling/maintenance crew chief drive mine in about a foot from
the foundation using some fancy electrical impact thingy that looks like
an electric drill. It went in like steel needles through eyeballs even though
I don't live in a place with sandy soil. But he was all, "tain't nawthin".

Maybe builders tend to backfill the gap between
the outside of the foundation and mother nature
with soil that has a few less cobblestones. Or not.

At least it's been excavated and then replaced since
the end of the last ice age,
so it may be less compacted.
 
w1ujay - thx for the info on NVIS. -couldn't do another antenna though. This home brew is fairly simple and low key. I've already got a TV antenna and J-pole for the scanner. I'm maxed.

When conditions are in, I have no problem (relatively) getting west to IL and as far down as northern FL. I had one guy in Corpus Cristi like he was down the street.

As far as "local", Paxton is no issue but, I guess that's cheating.
I sandbag on 38LSB all the time. Drag - you guys don't exist to me. lol

AHM - now that i look at a map with 'your eyes', i'm noticing I don't hear much out of a radial about 3-500mi out, which includes our 'close' northern neighbors.
Interesting!

ETA: I know some folks use beams and figured folks down to NYC were generally pointing theirs south - so, I didn't know if that was why i never hear NYCish areas. But if Mainers were pointing south, I figured i'd get them.

My browser doesn't like the mappy thing but, i'll find another source.
...nice pic insertion too!

Where I live is about 12' below street level - essentially underground as far as this stuff goes. I'm surprised it works at all.
But, I have open skies from the south (swinging westward) up to the north west. Which is probably my issue in a nutshell.

Ground rod against foundation = yes.
I got one vein of sand about 3 ft down, and with one push, it went another 3 feet. I was wondering; did that really just happen?
:)
 
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AHM - now that i look at a map with 'your eyes', i'm noticing I don't hear much out of a radial about 3-500mi out, which includes our 'close' northern neighbors.
Interesting!
Sorry, but you do know about this, right?

It means there's a circle of stations near you that you can talk to.
And then a donut of NFW.
And then further out, another ring of AOK.
It may (may) repeat until the rest of the world is accessible (or not).


Example:
One winter Monday morning (7-Mar'06) coming back from Killington on I-89
I was monitoring the 7272KHz Rag Chew 40m SSB net.

I specifically wanted to work a station I knew was in Concord NH,
but as we got closer he faded out even while the rest of the net was OK.

And then when we got around Hopkinton/Contoocook
I started picking him back up on the groundwave.


Ground rod against foundation = yes.
I got one vein of sand about 3 ft down, and with one push, it went another 3 feet. I was wondering; did that really just happen?
Hit your sewer pipe?

(I made so sure I wasn't going to hit the well umbilical before locating the ground rod...).
 
AHM - I do now.
:)
I didn't realize a single transmission could take both the sky and ground wave path. -Thought it was one or the other.

..and no chance of hitting anything on the side of the house where the g-rod was sunk.
:)
 
coming back to this - thinking of a BALUN or "impedance transformer"?

To summarize:
My dipole has ~70ohm native impedance.
Using 50ohm feedline

I'm curious as to what the effective difference is between a 1:1 BALUN or using an Impedance Transformer. By Impedance Transformer, I'm referring to the insertion of a section of 70ohm cable @ ~ 1wave away from the feedpoint, within the run of my 50ohm feedline. I had found a formula for this and for 11m it appears a 1.9ft section of 70ohm cable would do the trick.

This article discusses the transformer theory but, I think I got my formula somewhere else.
Twelfth-Wave Transformer

What is the effective difference between these two 'matching' solutions, BALUN or Transformer?
Not sure what direction to take?

thx!
 
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