After earlier issues with my Fritzel FD-3 and the fact it is not able to do 80m (which is a serious handicap with most contests) made me search for yet another antenna solution.
Wilko PA3BWK (from who I did loose the division league) dropped by te other day. He did inspect my setup and advised me to use a ZS6BKW antenna. My problem with not being able to stretch out twice the same length of wire from both sides of my chimney could be solved when I let the feeding point float in the air and put one wire over the mast.
That way I’m able to put 2x 13,75 meter and feed it with 12,2 meters of 450-ohm ladder line.
Fred PA3YH sponsored me with some left over antenna wire from his antenna project and I found some open ladder line from one of my earlier own antenna projects.
I’m still optimizing the new setup. I put down my beautiful white mast for now and put up a slightly longer mast for the ZS6BKW. That means my 2m/70cm Diamond is down for the moment. But I guess not for long.
This time of year isn’t very nice to do antenna experiments. Lots of rain, strong winds and it’s cold. But I can’t wait for spring, that way I loose to many Q’s!
Tag: Wilko PA3BWK
Losing division league 2013
The ARRL of the Netherlands is called the VERON. The organization is grouped into different regions. Every region has its own members. To promote the participation of contests the VERON does organize a division league between the different regions. When you participated in a contest, you submit your Q’s on a website and the every year there is a overall winner but also a region winner.
In my region Wilko PA3BWK wins for years in a row now. I know Wilko and consider him a friend. He has a spotless reputation in contesting. When Wilko wants to win, he will win, no matter what. But this year Wilko had a very busy year involving a big move etc. So he couldn’t spend as much time contesting as he wanted. I did see this reflecting his low score during 2013. At some point I decided to take a shot at the league and try to defeat Wilko. As you readers might noticed, I reported about quite a few contest participation’s over the last months. I didn’t blog about this subject on purpose to not reveal my strategy/intentions to Wilko. Unfortunately for me Wilko did recover on time and we had a great battle the last few contests. Tuesday 17 December the deadline for the division league closed and all scores are calculated. Turns out I lost from Wilko:
Afdelings Resultaat in de VERON Competitie.
==============================================
1. PA3BWK 70 38.8 %
2. PA1JIM 61 33.8 %
3. PA3CJP 42 23.3 %
4. PA3EER 4 2.2 %
5. PA3FYG 3 1.6 %
Totaal score: 180
And again a marvelous example of the determination of Wilko PA3BWK. Even in the last weeks of the division league he was able to turn a lag of multiple points on me around in a lead and win the league with no less then 9 points!!
All I can do is being humble, take the second place and congratulate Wilko PA3BWK for this spectacular victory.
Wilko: thanks for a great achievement. I did everything to keep you behind me, but you beat me fair and square: congrats!
Hopefully we’ll meet again next year in the division league of 2014! 😉