Last night was a big night! I made my first mobile HF dx contact - Appleton, WI USA to Italy! Since I received my license all of my mobile HF work has been daytime. I finally took the time to see what the 40 meter band would be like at night. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I knew that it would be from listening to AM talk radio and doing some short-wave listening (SWL). But to experience it in terms of another ham repeating MY call sign to confirm the contact was really a neat experience. I was suprised that my 100 watt signal made it through the noise. we had electrical (thunder) storms roll through earlier in the day and they were east of Appleton. He said my signal was 5 by 7. Not bad for a skinny coiled tri-band trunk mounted antenna. I run a UHV-6 by Comet. I can change coils for the HF segments of the band. 2 meters and 440 are fixed. While it doesn’t cover the entire band segment for each band, it does a good job in the sections it is tuned for. At around $150 (plus mount - around $40), it’s a good first choice antenna vs a much more expensive screwdriver antenna. Maybe I will own one of those some day, but for now this lets me get some experience and is a good value for the money. If you do buy one of these antennas you will need to use some Lock Tite to lock the set screws down. Make sure you do a good job when you tune it and make sure your ground is very good before you use that stuff though. I use the heavy duty stuff - it’s a long antenna and I don’t want it comming off during SkyWarn operations…

73’s

Jon Kreski, AB9NN
www.HamRadioResources.com