Last Saturday, I tuned the Slinky dipole to 40m so I could work the FISTS Fall Sprint. While I did OK in the Sprint, I’ve had mixed success on 40m since then. For one thing, the Slinky is acting much more finicky on 40 than it did on 30. The SWR is much more dependent on how low the antenna hangs on 40m than it was on 30m, and the lowest I seem to be able to get the SWR is about 1.2:1. On 30m, I was able to get it practically down to 1:1.
I’ve made some nice contacts so far on 40m. For example, I had a nice long ragchew with N4YX on Sunday. And I worked some DX last night (if you count Cuba as DX, anyway). Mostly, though, I find the band unremarkable. Right now, the band is relatively quiet; either everyone has gone to bed or conditions are really bad. Just for kicks, I tuned up to 30m, and didn’t copy any QSOs at all there.
As far as DX goes, there’s some. I’ve heard a few European stations, but they were rather weak, and I didn’t even try to contact them. There certainly is a lot less DX here than on 30m.
I did make one interesting contact this evening: K5FLU, Martin F. Jue, owner of MFJ Enterprises. Unfortunately, QSB got us before we were able to get much further than exchanging signal reports and equipment descriptions. I was going to complain about the 941D antenna tuner I bought many moons ago and never got to work right.
One thing I was surprised to hear him say was that he was using a loop antenna thumbtacked to a wall in his shack. At the very least, you’d expect him to have an MFJ vertical up on his roof.
I really have to get that Gap Titan built so I can operate more than one band…
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