Dark sky, freezing rain bullets, a perfect day for antenna work: I read that the worse the wx, the better the antenna so I gave it a shot. The NVIS 40m horiz loop worked ok but really didn't cut it on 60m: I could load it on 60m but it was worse than a dummy load. I did the sumz and decided to splice in a little over 14m wire.
I slacked the suspension at two corners and the loop & I descended into a world of tangled confusion. It was a gloomy day, the lightweight black plastic insulated wire all but invisible. Strange words were uttered. My foot found a soft spot and sank ankle deep in icy mud. My fingers kinda stiffened up. The wire persisted in tangling around me. I wasn't happy.
It was so cold that my 100w solder gun wouldn't melt the solder. In other times the dodge was to wind a few inches of cored solder wire around the splice and then get a flame under it. It was ok for emergencies but such joints were usually dirty and poor. I had another weapon, a 1500w heat gun. From 1cm away it melted the solder in seconds and produced bee-yootiful bright joints and then made short work of the heat shrink I slid over the splices. A further 45 minutes of trips, tangles, strange oaths, imprecations and fancy suspension cord pulling saw a 60m horizontal square loop hovering ~4m over the ground. At this point I was paralysed with cold; wet, miserable and tired I got all the junk under shelter as the rain pelted again.
This was a good sign: I had suffered so surely the loop would be good. And it was. It loaded on all hf bands. Reception on 60m was good. Yesterday I heard stations on 60 at 59 and 579. Today I heard G stations at 59+20dB and 599+20dB: the biggest sig was @12w! Outside the GB allocation some SM stations were putting out rock crushing sigs. Then the band was fading and so was I so TX tests happen tomorrow. By then my feet may have warmed up again.....
It looks like I have a functioning NVIS antenna for 60m: I did hear it is an increasingly popular band for QRP so that's something to look forward to.
Vic /tired but..... tired.
