What if you could only have one band?

Started by gil, September 01, 2013, 04:56:55 PM

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gil

What would it be and why? Say, you could only afford a single band rig...

I would choose 40m. Because it works for NVIS as well as DX contacts and you can receive some AM broadcast stations at the end of the band. I've always had good luck on 40m CW, maybe because I mostly operate in the evening..

Gil.

RadioRay

I agree - 40 meters.  Regional contacts in your and surrounding States during the day, continental and inter-continental communication at night.  The AM broadcasters at the top of the band are a plus.  This is also the reason why for outdoor QRP'ers, forty meters is usually the first choice for back country work. 

If there are no contests, it would be even better!    ;)


>de RadioRay ..._ ._
"When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can."  ~ Matthew Henry

KK0G

Third vote for 40 meters for all the reasons previously stated.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

Archangel320420

I fourth the vote for 40 meters. It seems always open to somewhere and local out to 300 miles most of the times of day. News from broadcast stations is a plus. An easy to make simple dipole works well.

raybiker73

It's looking pretty unanimous for 40 meters. Same here, 40 all the way.

cockpitbob

Yup, 40 for all the reasons mentioned above.  20 is a close second for me.  It's a slightly wider band, works great during the day and for a bit of the evening, and possibly most important, the wire antennas are half the length.

Quietus

For my purposes, it would be 80m.  Same NVIS arguments as above in favor of 40m.  But in my AO, 80m is where potential friends are on the nigthly check-ins on the Wyoming Cowboy net.  The house dipole cut for @3.800 works well.
 
For this board, being able to put up a 16-20' mast on short notice for the consenus 40m is a good thing.  What do you stabilize that 40m dipole wire with?  Maybe with an 80m wire.  Or, you can set up that short mast and put 80m and 40m wires in the same axis, one being beneath the other.  Then use a 60m cross-wire to stabilize the both., and you know that there's much privacy on the few alloted 60m band freqs.  That works fine. 
 
Simplicity rules, though.  Put up the 80m wire and stabilize it with a 40m wire on a short mast.  You will get the close concept, and maybe some distance, depending on end height of wires. 

KK0G

Quote from: Quietus on September 06, 2013, 11:03:06 PM
For my purposes, it would be 80m.  Same NVIS arguments as above in favor of 40m.  But in my AO, 80m is where potential friends are on the nigthly check-ins on the Wyoming Cowboy net.  The house dipole cut for @3.800 works well.
 
For this board, being able to put up a 16-20' mast on short notice for the consenus 40m is a good thing.  What do you stabilize that 40m dipole wire with?  Maybe with an 80m wire.  Or, you can set up that short mast and put 80m and 40m wires in the same axis, one being beneath the other.  Then use a 60m cross-wire to stabilize the both., and you know that there's much privacy on the few alloted 60m band freqs.  That works fine. 
 
Simplicity rules, though.  Put up the 80m wire and stabilize it with a 40m wire on a short mast.  You will get the close concept, and maybe some distance, depending on end height of wires. 


Oh come on now!! We had 100% unanimous consensus that 40 meters was the band and now you want to screw it all up with 80 meters? Just kidding  ;D


I don't use 80 meters near as much as I did in the past. My main problem is that for portable operations it's much more difficult to pack, deploy and repack an 80 meter antenna compared to one for 40 meters. It is an excellent band for wide region coverage using NVIS (which by the way probably a majority of typical 80m antennas are whether by intentional design or not). Back in my phone days before I "saw the light" ;D , I remember the Iowa 75 meter traffic net covered the entire state with almost repeater like coverage and most people were using nothing more than a 100 watts into a crappy dipole.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

gil

I'd love to have 80m for CW, but that means stretching out 134ft. of wire. Which I do have handy mind you, along with a match box I made.. I haven't been able to try the darn thing yet! Next camping trip maybe, when the weather cools down. So, apparently 40 is kind. I have to say, I've had the best results with it to Eastern Europe. Sometimes I also hit withing 200-400 miles which is probably NVIS, although my end-fed is vertical.

Gil.

Lamewolf

I'll take that band that runs from 1.8 to 30 mhz !  ;D

WA4STO

Quote from: Lamewolf on October 28, 2013, 02:23:29 PM
I'll take that band that runs from 1.8 to 30 mhz !  ;D

Yes, exactly.  Although I tend to utilize 40 meters the most, I'd be S.O.L. if my open-wire-fed square loop wasn't in place.

Why?  Because HF propagation is like some/many/most wimmen I know.  Fickle.  Ole sol has kept me from doing much of anything on 40 the past
couple of days, so I'm uber-delighted that the NTSD Pactor and Winmor/WL2K nodes are scanning away on multiple freqs, multiple bands.  Just now, I'm connected to N0IA's node on 20, since 40 is shot.  Thanks ole buddy, ole pay, dear Mr. Sol.

Then I need 80 CW during the evenings to give and take traffic from the Central and Pacific area NTS nets.

Point is, if I only had one antenna, I'd be screwed, somewhat blue, although never tattood.

HooRAY (sorry) for open wire feed line!

73

LH

KK0G

Quote from: WA4STO on October 28, 2013, 04:26:40 PM
HooRAY (sorry) for open wire feed line!


+1!
Open wire feed line is much lighter weight than coaxial feed lines and the loss from even a sky high SWR is so negligible that it can be completely ignored. On top of all that it's dirt cheap compared to coax........... what's not to love?
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G