Today was fun. I had a little time this afternoon, so I headed out to a nearby park to test a new antenna and ended up making a couple of interesting contacts.
I spent a couple of hours in Towpath Park, a nice little park along the Schuylkill River. It’s usually not very crowded, so it’s been one of my favorite places to test new antennas. Today, I was doing some initial testing and tuning on a Tri-Band Vertical from QRPGuys.
I set up the antenna and spent some time taking SWR plots on the antenna. The 20 and 30 meter bands were great without any adjustments. The 40M band is resonating too low, so I need to do some tweaking on one of the loading coils. I’ll do a separate post on this antenna when it’s finished.
I put the antenna analyzer away and got out my KX3. I made a few “CQ SKCC” calls on 20M and was answered by CT7AFN in Portugal. There was some QSB but we managed to exchange SKCC numbers. A few minutes later, I got a call from another station in Portugal, CT1BQH. Wow! Back-to-back Portuguese SKCC stations. This new antenna definitely has some mojo.
I worked stations in Texas and Florida before wrapping up. I neglected to bring gloves today and the wind chill was taking a toll on my fingers. I packed up my equipment and headed out happy with the contacts I made in a short period of time.
I have a little work to do on this new antenna but so far it looks like a keeper.
72, Craig WB3GCK
WB3GCK QRP Amateur Radio 
Craig,
I’m waiting for warmer weather here in Michigan to test my vertical based on the QRPGuys 3 band vertical kit. I would be interested in your configuration.
Rick Barnich KA8BMA
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Hi Rick:
I used about 17-ft of #26 stealth wire for the radiator. I made four 10-ft radials from some light guage speaker wire. 20 and 30M were less than 1.5:1 across the bands. 40M was off quite a bit. I’m going to have to take a turn or two off of the top coil to get it closer. Pretty neat antenna for $15.
73, Craig WB3GCK
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