The QRPer Board

The NOAA raised an alert for a strong (Class4) geomagnetic storm which will hit Earth between this evening and tomorrow, the storm is currently classified as G4 but given that the multiple flares may sum up, it may reach the G5 level https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=10&month=0...

I'm going to try a 29/17 EFRW. My home antenna is a 35.5/17, and works well enough for me. For the choke, I'm using N6ARA's choke design - 12 bifiliar turns on a T50-43. I've got it all built, and I hope to get some time to try it out today. it all depends from the bands you're interested to cover ...

I was asking the OP... anyhow, 20ft of RG174 at 10MHz will have a loss of 0.6dB where the same lenght of the "humble" RG-58 will show a loss of 0.2dB not significative, sure, but when it comes to QRP/QRPp it's always a good idea reducing losses as much as possible, and then we don't know w...

N8TGQ wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 6:54 pm I don't think you will see much difference when using short runs (around 25' or so). I have heard 316 is tougher, but it's also more expensive. I have a 20' length of 174 that's going on 5 years and about 100 outings. Never had any issues with it.

Good luck!

so... what's your pick, and why ?

An example, using a radiator (wire) of 84ft and a counterpoise of 17ft a 9:1 and a wideband choke (Guanella) both wound on FTxxx-43, we'll have a random covering all bands (including WARC) from 80 to 6 meters with the help of an antenna matching unit by the way

as for the radiator length, see here https://k7mem.com/Ant_End_Fed.html#Not_Random_Multi ensure to add a good guanella choke after the 9:1 and use at least one counterpoise wire with a lenght around 1/16 Lambda at the lower frequency (e.g about 5m if the lowest frequency is 3.5MHz, eventually add a ...

https://www.alphaantenna.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/What-Coax-Should-I-use.jpg https://www.alphaantenna.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/What-Coax-Should-I-use.jpg consider that every 3dB of gain or loss the power doubles or halves, so a 3dB cable loss means that the antenna will receive half of t...

looks good !

the carabiner hole is useful both when the antenna is deployed and to hang it to a backpack wnen the antenna is wrapped, the velcro stripes will help keeping the wire/coax wrapped

Just to try explaining it better, see the image below (ugly but hopefully "readable")

Please, post an update when you'll try it !