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© 2010 Arctic Diamonds - TF4M
The great Arctic King is built right on the edge of the sea.
This accounts for his extremely strong signal and low angle of radiation towards more than half of the horizon.
In addition, the salt water impregnates the ground around the King and ensures excellent ground conductivity and very low ground losses.
I would like to clarify that the Arctic King is only used for transmitting – I receive with an array of Beverage antennas ranging from 170 meters to 400 meters long in various directions.
I would also like to clarify that the downward angles of the top radial wires and the in-land angle as well, were dictated by the shape of the small peninsula that the Arctic King is built on and on the availability of large wooden poles.
Slightly better performance would have resulted if it had been possible to have the top radials horizontal and in-line.
Such poles are not easy to come by in Iceland, in fact the King – the 27m pole – is the largest pole in Iceland.
The Beverage antenna pointing towards Japan is the shortest Beverage in my arsenal – 170 meters long.
I intend to build a larger Beverage towards Japan to decrease the beam width and reduce the noise level even further.
Conditions today have been poor. No trace of TX3A either on 160 meters or on 80 meters.
I did call CQ on 160 meters with only a few JA stations being added to the log.
The band was very noisy which is unusual here, as can be heard in the recording.
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The TX3A Chesterfield Islands DXpedition is QRV.
They were listening for JA below 1825 with a massive JA pile up which I could hear well and above 1825 for everyone else, but I was not hearing the EU and NA stations well.
I heard ON4UN and GM3POI calling in the pileup – those two have some of the strongest signals out of Europe, but I was not really able to find out where TX3A was listening or to discern his pattern of listening.
So I did the smart thing, I joined the JA pile up and I made the QSO in less than 5 minutes !
I can imagine that the JA wall must have been MASSIVE at TX3A.
I could sense that TX3A did not really believe that TF4M was for real !
The Arctic King rules the North !
Of course, the on-line logs will determine whether or not I am in the log.
Update: The TX3A on-line log confirms that I am in the log.
QSO with TF4M in the log
