Ooh, waaaay too many ham radio accessories around the house! There’s a long story, but the short version is that I have a lot of ham accessories and the time has come to part with them. You can read all about it on the other pages, but know that I kept some of the goodies for myself! Just click on the link at the top of the page – Ham Accessories for Sale – to see the list of stuff available. Those pesky terms and conditions 
are on the page in the pulldown under that same tab.
Hope you find something you like.
73,
W4FT
It looks like my B&W 160-20 trap dipole is having some serious issues. I noticed during the Nov. Sweeps contest that contacts on 40 meters were almost impossible, but 20 and 80 meters was working like a charm. When I put the antenna analyzer on it, I discovered something disturbing. Everything below 20 meters was 6:1 or worse! ( The match on 20 meters is still around 1:1) Today, I pulled the antenna down and started checking it. Everything looked ok mechanically, so I started checking for opens across the traps. Results were inconsistent, and not repeatable on the ohmmeter.
To make a long story short, OXIDATION! I should have soldered all the connections instead of depending on just the mechanical connection of twisted wires. The oxidation looks to be disrupting the antenna connections between the wires and the traps. One of the 40 meter traps may be bad too.
Now, I’m thinking that it is time to replace this antenna with something else for 160 through 40 meters. 160 is a bonus, but 80 and 40 are absolutely required. I have 20 and up covered with a yagi. I’ve been thinking about loops, dipoles, etc., but this probably needs to be some kind of wire antenna. I do have several trees to serve as supports.
Throw out your suggestions! What would you go with?
73, W4FT
With the sun cycle at or near the bottom, 10 meters is a real challenge right now. Last weekend, I spent time on and off trying to make contacts on 10 meters. As you might expect, contacts were few and far between. But, I thought I’d give it a shot. At the start of the contest on Friday night, I started tuning around, looking for stations. Most of the band was dead. I did make a contact with a station in Virginia, which must have attracted local attention. My next 4 contacts were all local Raleigh stations.
Over the next two days, I scanned the band, looking for stations, mostly with no success. Late Sunday, I did find a few more signals, probably from sporadic-E, coming in from Oklahoma, Kansas and South Carolina.
Ultimately, conditions were just so poor that, except for checking the band occassionally, I didn’t do much. While these conditions make for a real challenge, I’ve never been interested in sitting for hours, calling out into the ether without response. This was a great contest back in the mid 90′s when I got my license and maybe it will be again when the sunspot cycle peaks again, but this year…. oh well.
A Clean Sweep! Contacts with every section in the US and Canada during the contest!!!! This was about my third or fourth November Sweepstakes, but I finally did it — maybe. Yes, I know that I made contacts with every section, but will it survive the log checking process? With about 16 sections having only one contact in my log, there’s a chance that a busted call could rain on my parade. One year, I lost three sections from busted calls. Another year, no losses. It all depends on how well the exchanges were handled by me and by the person on the other end. Fortunately, the clean sweep mugs are based on submitted logs, not on post-processing. Since I know that I made solid contacts with all 80 sections, I’m getting my mug! 
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