The last couple of days I have been camping in South Texas. I am learning Morse Code and have been using it mainly with either my Yaesu FT-817 or the KX3. With an endfed wire on my DX Commander pole I was talking easily to Hungary and Bulgaria. My issue is my local EMMCOM wants WINLINK on 80 meters. It is all well and good but if you are 'deployed' I can't see having the room for an 80 meter antenna. Any suggestions?? It just amazes me that shack rats expect field rats to use 100 watts on WINLINK on 80 meters.
Good question. The comms begins with propagation first. The easiest antenna length does no good, if the band is too high for your regional comms/NVIS. 80 meters is a real work horse for regional comms. The great news is that stringing a 130'ish foot piece of wire at low height is easy. Remember that for local comms having the antenna up a bit over head height is a good >start<. Any EASY elevation after that helps, but is generally not essential. I've done a lot of outdoor/wilderness radio and mil radio opns, where a bit over head height was what was practical. That's not good for long rages, like a thousand miles or more, but fine for regional/high take-off angle work, usually within the one-tank-of-gas-distance ( 0-350 miles,. which matters most to me.
I'd recommend either a simple dipole cut to frequency BEFORE you deploy or Gil's favorite , the End Fed Half Wave wire. The EFHW is somewhat easier to deploy and retrieve, especially in trees.
CW DX! Definitely, A little wire and Morse code is amazing. I just had a basic QSO with a fellow in Germany on forty meters using my QRP rig, maybe five Watts. and a dipole up only 30 feet. It would have been better to have the dipole at 60 feet for that long haul, but he and I talked for about 15 minutes in slow, handsent Morse/CW, so it was still working - even at QRP levels.
Please let us know how things are going for your radio excursions./
73 de RadioRay ..._ ._