80 meter
22 November 2012 | by 
I worked YU7U on 80 meter with CW, pretty fast with 32 wpm. But with a little help from CWSkimmer no problem at all. With my own ears I check always if the decodes are right. Hi hi. With the winter season the higher bands are closing down early. That means that I go down to the lower bands. 40 meter is a nice band but very crowded. On 80 meter there is a lot of space available. Enough for CW, JT65 and PSK31. On 40 meter the JT65 frequency 7076 KHz is in the SSB section of the band. On 7039 KHz are a lot of strong CW beacons and other noise. 80 meter is a good alternative for low band operations. The problem for a lot of hams is the antenna space needed for lower bands. Vertical antennas are most of the time insufficient unless you put a lot of radials on ground level. An end fed antenna is possible but you need still 40 meters of length, and that is maybe not possible for a lot of us. I like to work on 160 meter too, but... no antenna for it. Maybe an EH antenna? But that antenna concept is questionable and maybe losses of -20dB.
One Response to “80 meter”
- Matt W1MST, Editor
I’ve just recently got on 80 meters with a trapped dipole run into the same coax as my 20 meter dipole. Overall length is about 80 feet and is in an inverted-v configuration up about 20 feet. It’s not the best, but it works! I’ve made several QSOs with it already with PSK31 and I’m looking forward to finally having some fun after the sun goes down.