acitivities on 30m

Yesterday, big visit : ON5ZO & Co in the house with hints and tricks and a lot of "not-again-this-kind-of-Murphial-troubles-when-we-are-together".

Lesson 1 : never try to use an analyser with the antenna connected to an MFJ relay switch.  Strange results will happen, and there is no explanation...

Lesson 2 : trust (but verify) the Steppir, it stays a good antenna.

Lesson 3 : paper calculations are ok, but the practical in nature situation is not the theory.  After measuring my home-made 30m dipole (calculated on paper without analyser) it seemed that the dip was on 9600 Khz.  We had to cut 2x 0,5m to have it resonant on 10115 Khz.

At this moment I can use the antenna without tuner, so I can use full power in stead of 750 W.

This results of course in much better reverse-beacon reports.

W3LPL before:  26 dB snr, now (at 2:00 local time in the middle of the night) 35 dB
K1TTT before : 19 dB snr, now 34 dB
KM3T before : 25 dB snr, now 38 dB
DF7GB from 13 to 36 dB

But there is a negative side on the story : the antenna is mounted as a sloper and as a consequence it takes up much more QRM than a horizontal antenna.
 
High power reaches more people but I have much more problems to copy low-power stations. 

So dear (mainly US) stations on the other side,  I'm very sorry and I'm not deaf (not yet at least I may hope) but it is very hard to copy a 100W station if I'm only 559 at your side with 1500 W and no special receiving antenna.

DXCC worked counter on 30m is now on 45...  still a lot of work to do.

Yesterday I was able to add HK, HS0 and EW.