Thursday, January 1, 2009

Which bands first?

Sitting down and thinking about my planned contest efforts, I realized that it's probably going to be to my advantage to first concentrate on building antennas for 40 and 80 meters. Since in most contests I'll be operating in the evenings/early mornings, after the kids are in bed, effort spent on antennas for 20/15/10 meters will be largely wasted except in contests I'm focusing on and have pre-arranged for daylight operating time.

Given that, it seems like I would benefit from a set of antennas that offer both reasonable low-angle radiation and NVIS performance (for close-in stations). If I can somehow fit a 40/80 meter vertical, along with a low dipole for those same bands, that seems like an effective set of antennas for contesting in the hours of interest.

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