Thanks, Lou.

It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

I'm going to wait to see what else we can do tomorrow, and someday, if I 
really get brave, I'll try the amplifier, but am quite hesitant to do that 
under the current set-up.

This will certainly give me something to play around with during these cold 
Michigan winter months.

73 from Tom Behler:  KB8TYJ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lou Kolb" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 10:08 PM
Subject: Re: So, I'll do anything to get on 160 meters: Check this out


Way to go, Tom.  Sounds like you're doing quite well as is.  There's no
accounting for RF.  Good luck improving it further.  Lou WA3MIX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "tom behler" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 9:52 PM
Subject: So, I'll do anything to get on 160 meters: Check this out


> Hi, all.
>
> As some of you know, I have been struggling witha Carolina Windom 160
> Compact installation over the past few weeks, with little success,
> especially when it has come to getting on 160 meters.
>
> The lowest SWR I could get on the band was about 8.0 to 1.
>
> Jim Thompson from RadioWorks (the company who makes the antenna), is
> trying
> to help me troubleshoot the situation, and he has some ideas which a ham
> friend and I are going to try tomorrow, weather permitting.
>
> Anyway, one quick suggestion he made to me was to take a coil of about 100
> feet of RG8X coax, and put it between the transmitter and my Tentech 238A
> manual tuner.  He said that this length is about a quarter wave on 160
> meters, and might get my sWR down some.
>
> Well, I did this, and it took the SWR down to about 5 to 1 in the center
> of
> the band--around 1.850 MHZ.
>
> The antenna still wouldn't tune with the auto tuner in the TS480, but it
> actually tuned with the Tentech 238 manual tuner.
>
> I realize that all I was doing was reducing the SWR by introducing loss
> into
> the antenna, but I thought I'd try to make a few contacts anyway, just to
> see if it would be possible.
>
> The Canadian RAC contest is going on this week-end, so I made 2 CW
> contacts
> with no trouble at all.  Then, for the heck of it, I went to the SSB
> portion
> of 160, and made a contact with an Ontario station using only 100 watts.
> I
> asked for an honest signal report, and he says I was 10 over S9 into
> Ontario.
>
> This surprised the heck out of me, since I know the antenna can't be that
> efficient, but if nothing else, I can now say I've been on 160 meters for
> the first time in my ham career.
>
> Now, if I can get the antenna itself to perform better, without taking
> such
> crazy measures, I'll be in good shape for the NAQP contests in January.
>
> I know that I have reached this milestone in a rather unorthadox way, but
> I
> just felt the need to share it with my fellow list members.
>
> I'll let you know how things go tomorrow when we get back to some real
> antenna tweaking.
>
> 73 from Tom Behler:  KB8TYJ, Big Rapids, MI