Above is Shaddow with the IC-775 and Hallicrafters SX-28. Below is the 5 band 20-10 meter, 30' boom quad. 14-15 square foot that I changed out for the Steppir 3 element 20-6 meter below. I still think about putting up another quad. Building antennas gets in the blood like contesting. Every year I go through withdraws thinking about building/rebuilding antennas. The recent antenna work/changes are an example of that.

FYI: Unfortunately on May 2 or May 3, I lost my computer due to a problem with the hard drive. I've recovered it but due to this I have lost nearly 1500 or 2000 contacts since early Febuary till May 4. The log was reading about 21488 contacts and now reads about 19898. All those contacts have been lost and the only way I can possibly see any recovery is QRZ logbook.would you believe. Or maybe sending me an email and reminding me with the contact information.Just uploaded to LoTW after recovering what I could. I know several people have asked me to upload to LoTW for Oregon conformation and such but now that looks impossible if the contacts were between about 2/06/2012 and 5/3/2012.

If anyone wants the dementions I developed on NECWIRES 2.0 for the big quad array I can send a file over email with them. I worked several months on my old computer developing the quad dementions for each band.

I just put a picture on the top of the page from a few years back on W2NQ/7's Maco quad when we were helping him get it back up in the air. That's Bill N7WMM in the picture at the top of the page with John, W2NQ. Now John only has a dipole at 30' and still does fantastic. His QTH is on a hill about 150-200' above the valley floor.

Below is a picture looking up the tower to the 3 element Steppir at 58' (18 meters). You can see the tower is setup to tilt over to the left (south) with the 4 inch gin pole for leverage that allows me to work on the antenna(s) from a ladder. I have had two Rohn 25 towers with this arrangement one at 40' and this one at 50' of tower.

51J-4 Collins RCVR above the R-390.

Your's truely, KI7M, had a love/hate relationship with quad antennas. If you have ever tried to get the SWR down on a hard to tune quad like a gotham or maco you'll know why. What's a Maco Quad? In the 1960's W9GIW, H.P.McCormick put out 'The Maco Quad'. It was a spider quad with 20/15/10 meters on it that had a 'frame' built like a pole lamp. Only weighed about 23 pounds. It performed exceptionally well as W2NQ/7 and myself can swear to, but it was not an easy antenna to tune up. I just put up a picture of W2NQ/7's Maco quad above from a few years back. It was destroyed in a storm when the guys broke. I have the parts for one that if I ever lose the steppir I'll put up the quad.

Lineup on antennas as of 2/2012

1. 3 element 20-6 meter Steppir at 58' (18 meters)

2. Hygain hytower ground mounted for 40/80 meters. 45-50 radials 34/66' long just under the surface (hope they haven't all rusted away.)

3. 40 meter slopers off the tower at 55' (4 of them) for NE,SE,S and NW. Some SWR issues with them.

4. 40 meter DXEngineering DXE-40VE-1 with the base at 13' high and four 33' radials above the ground. Required 35' 7 1/2" and still is a little short but is very broadbanded.

5. 135' of wire in an inverted L' arrangement for 160 meters. Goes up at about a 70 degree angle to 65' high, then bends over. Fed against the hytower radial system of 34'/66' wires. Use a 3" coil of 1/4" copper tubing (air core) with a wire jumper to move the dip from 1800-1910 Khz or so. Have about 15 turns of coil which is actually more than I need since it will dip down into the AM BC band.

6. 125' of wire over the 90-100' fir tree for 160 meter inverted 'U' vertical, L', whatever. Fed against the hytower radial system like the inverted L'. Requires the MN-2700 Drake tuner to drop the SWR down from 2:1 to near 1:1. I'm not a big fan of tuners especially running power in a contest so depending on how this works out the new antenna may be short lived. But looking at the height of that big fir tree I'm hoping it will work for the low angle DX work. Why don't more DXpeditions pay more attention to 160 meter SSB?!

7. GP6 for 2 mtrs/440 on top of the mast reaching 63'.

I brought down the tower and changed out the tailtwister rotor for a Yaesu G-1000DXA. I really missed my old yaesu G1000-DXA and picked up another to replace the original. Now things are so much better.

Changedout the driven element EHU because of intermittent connection problems. Suspect the SO-239 'prongs' becoming loose. Also fixed a high SWR on 10 meters apparently caused by my not soldering the sheild onto the SO-259 connectors on the LMR-400 50 ohm coax. Added four 40 meter slopers and 2mtr/440mhz GP6 vertical again like in the big quad picture. Like I say, antenna building get's in the blood.

People are flexable, computers are ridged and inflexable. 30 hours of CQWW160MSSB contest and it takes about 6-8 more hours to get the log file uploaded to the server! ARRRGGGGHHHH!

Running Yaesu FT-1000MP, Commander HF-2500, and some boatanchors. HR0-50t1, HRO-60, 51J-3/4, etc. Also some later solid state transceivers like FT-1000D with Dentron DTR-2000L, TS940sat, and IC-775. It's fun to pickup those older sets you couldn't afford way back when and build up your 'dream stations'. Picked up an Icom IC-736 for 6 meters and IC-R7000 for vhf/uhf/shf. So many radios, so little time (and room). It never ends.I just picked up a Kenwood TS-50S to put in my Tahoe if I can come up with a good place for it.

From now on USE LoTW (Logbook ofThe World) if you want a QSL. I upload to LoTW about every 3 months. I am getting out of the QSL card business, they are just a pain and the only ones I care about are for new countries of which there are only about 6 left. DON'T SEND ANY MORE QSL'S. If this upsets some people I'm sorry but I can no longer waste alot of time, money and frustration trying to please people for their umptenth Oregon qsl card. Anyone who just has to have that Oregon QSL card had better include an SASE or SAE and a green stamp.

United States Army Security Agency 4/69 to 4/72. Stationed at Ft.Ord (basic), Ft.Devens, MA; 7th RRFS Udorn Thailand; Vint Hill Farms, VA. 05D20/30. Now days no one even knows about the old ASA it seems. Getting old, huh!

19 years at Tektronix and 7 years at Xerox, first as an Electronic Technician, then in telecommunications. Last big project was programing and deploying 130+ Cisco 4606/4609 switches as well as some 6513's. I was actually pretty good with up grade projects like this even if I do say so myself! Really!

Umpqua Valley Amateur Radio Club founding member along with WB7OTR,AE7Q,W7LNE,WB7OTM,KA7DCL,KA7ADI and others.

Elmer: AE7Q, Dave Lee (SK) 'best technician I ever knew'. I miss him ever day for his technical advice and his humor.

CQ Zone 03 and ITU Zone 06

(503)393-0545

51J-3 Collins RCVR with my dream 64'GTO and WWII jeep 1:18 scale models. I consider the 51J-3 a better receiver than the 51J-4 due to apparent AVC/AGC issues. Backing off the RF gain helps

Above is my messy shack (a messy shack is a happy shack). FT-1000mp, FT-1000D, etc. Below is the tilt over base of my Rohn 25 tower.

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My cat Shadow says hello (and feed me).

More recent picture of the Steppir and 40 meter slopers and hytower (why does it look like it's leaning?). While the slopers receive better sometimes than the verticals, their SWR issues are a pain. The best SWR on them is the NE sloper at 1.5:1 and the others are below the bottom of the band with about 1.8-2:1 or more as you go up in frequency. Even so, they work as receive antennas on 40/80 and 160 meters. I really don't like using a tuner when running power during a contest in case something goes wrong and I don't spot it right away.

That's the old man with Patrick 'fat cat' who weighs about 25 pounds and has claws (oh, did I do something wrong?).

Working on new mast and sliding the Steppir up about 9 feet.

Below is probably my most recent picture of the steppir on the tower and you can see the big fir tree on the right where the 160 meter antennas are. For years I've wanted to get another line over the big fir tree and get a 160 meter antenna over it. But so far with so little activity on 160 I'm not sure the new antenna works any good. You would think looking at the huge tree getting something up that high would do well.