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Old 09-15-2014, 12:06 PM   #13
N8CXX
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Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Michigan
Posts: 42
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Licensed as a Novice in the Fall of 1978. Took a General class offered by the local Ham store and successfully upgraded to General in April of 1979. Got hooked on DX and needed to upgrade to get the added frequencies. I upgraded to Extra in the summer of 1980. Then found out that without a KW amp, and bigger antennas, I wasn't getting thru pile ups with any consistency. My old TET tri-bander just didn’t cut it. I was limit to 45’ as we lived in the city on a small lot. Then I got totally hooked into contesting.

We decided to move out of the city to a larger place with some land. I started with a Rohn 45G @ 50’ with the same tri-bander and no amp. I then started pricing mono-banders and decided I could design and build my own antennas for less. I built many different size antennas during the course of my contesting days.

When we decided to move back to the city, my station consisted of 2 towers. Tower #1 had: 6/6 on 10m @ 110’/80’, 3 elements on 40m @ 100’, 6 elements for 10 @ 50’. Tower #2 had: 5/5 on 15m @ 120’/85’, 4/4 on 20m @ 110’/60’, 6 elements on 10m fixed SE @ 35’. For 80m I had a dipole at 100’ strung between the towers and 2 full ¼ verticals that were steerable. 160m was an inverted V at 110’. Yes I owned quite a few tailtwisters and sidemounted rotation units. I did finally get a SB220 and an Alpha. The one with two 8877’s in it.

Now I use my Tarheels II mounted to a copper pipe in the middle of my city sized backyard. All of stuff was sold when I moved including the amps.

Ahh the memories.
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John
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