A note on NVIS...

This is an old post from my wordpress site:

September 21, 2010

For operating at home I strung the Par End Fedz 10/20/40 from the top of my dining room window (about 8ft high) to a fence pole (~4ft) that is randomly placed in our yard, but happened to be nearly the perfect distance away to pull the wire tight. I had good DX success with the antenna on both 20, and 40m with the low configuration and didn’t have any problem contacting stations from both coasts and even the Caribbean and Hawaii. It did however lack greatly for contacts into Colorado and surrounding states. I have 2 pieces of electrical conduit that I had bolted together to act as a mast for a 40m, ladder-line fed dipole that I had strung over the house the previous year but has been unused since I took down that antenna. I lashed this mast (about 15ft high?) to the fence post in the yard and pulled the end of the antenna to the top of it. With the new, higher configuration I tested it by checking into the High Noon Net on 7.240mhz. Previously with the low wire, I had a hard time checking into the net with many repeats of my call sign and often garnering no response at all. However, with the new high wire, I have checked into the net 2 days in a row without a problem at all. One net control station was located in southern New Mexico, quite nearly in the null of my antenna, and the other near Salt Lake City, Utah, thus indicating I am getting a good vertical signal out for NVIS work. This is encouraging as previously I couldn’t contact anyone at all if they were within a few hundred miles. I have not had much opportunity to check how the antenna work for low-angle DX stuff but have had a couple of contacts into CA and MO. The hummingbirds don’t care either way and enjoy perching on the wire in any configuration…

Par End Fedz 10/20/40 on 4ft pole

Par End Fedz 10/20/40 on ~15ft pole