ARRL CW

with the addition of the OP-DES 14mhz yagi installed, I would put an entry in the ARRL DX CW 2017 contest. Single band entry 20mtr's Un-assisted as per the rules and high power.

I started on Saturday at 1100z.
the first hour went slow, but as expected. 1200z and the sun was shining on NA east coast and signals were getting stronger.
things started to pick up and so did the pace. from 1300z the rate meter never dropped below 60 Q's/Hr and for two hours it was over 100 Q's/Hr. I stopped at 1900z as the band was dropping out and signals becoming weaker.
I closed Saturday with 673 Qso's.

Sunday started slow and remained slow. very few Qso's being made. but it appeared that 15mtr's was busy. the A was up to 20 and the K was at 4 for most of the weekend.

I have done some RBN analysis for the 18/02/2017 using K1TTT.

you can see both peaks in the morning and the evening.

the shot below is from RBN sunday the 19th. really low at the start and peaked just after 1200z, but reasonable signal all the way through until I finished sunday afternoon.

some notes. i should have done longer in the chair on the Saturday.

after the weekend I was really happy with the innovantennas OP-DES 14mhz yagi.


73 simon.

 

 



14Mhz OP-DES Yagi Cont'd

Built and in the air, time to test the antenna with my MFJ259 antenna analyser.

Innov states 1.5:1 or better, well it is better, 1.1:1 across the whole of the 14Mhz band. cant get better than that.

for comparison I still have my cushcraft A3S antenna on another tower.
for the OP-DES yagi I ran 90meters of Messi & Paloni coax Ultraflex 10.  at 14mhz they state a loss of 1.4db per 100meters. if I had used RG213 then the loss would have been more than double of the messi and paloni coax. money does buy a db or two.

the tests I have done are not scientific but switching antennas and seeing what the S-meter says on my transceiver, K3S.
the OP-DES yagi out performs the A3S and the further away the station is the better it gets.
up to an S point or two better at times.
the front to back is amazing, upto 30db 5 S-points and the side rejection is also excellent.

one thing I have noticed from the A3S is, how quiet the OP-DES yagi is on Receive, upto an S point better. on a couple of occasions I cannot hear the station on the A3S but I could hear it on the OP-DES yagi.