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 Previous: In Brief |  Next: The K7VVV Solar Update |
 WA1FVJ's antenna farm: 6-meter dipole on the right, 70-cm and 2-meter beam on the left. Armstrong rotator not shown. Coax functions as a random wire radiator on all HF bands. |
NEWINGTON, CT, Dec 20, 2001--Six meters is hot, and Ed Seaward, WA1FVJ, is living proof. Seaward has worked 100 grids on 6 meters--CW and SSB--with less than 5 W. His antenna? A 9-foot-long dipole perhaps 20 feet high--barely above the roof of his East Hartford, Connecticut home.
This operating
feat earned him the ARRL VHF/UHF Century
Club (VUCC) award. You need to work 100 grids on 6 meters to obtain it. Seaward says
it took two years to work 90 of those grids and nine countries. The last 10
grids came in the following year. Most of the contacts were made via Sporadic
E, but he says he also worked meteor scatter and F2 mode--the latter a
phenomenon he says he last encountered 10 years ago. His best QRP DX contact on
6 meters was HC8N-Galapagos.
 Seaward's 6-meter log shows strong signal reports from DX stations. |
Seaward also operates 2-meter QRP. In April 2000 he worked a dozen CW stations QRP, via 2-meter aurora. In all, Seaward has logged more than 150 QRP contacts on 2 meters as well as the more than 100 on 6 meters. On 30-meter CW, he worked T32IW and T32VU. He's also worked Colorado on 40 milliwatts using a kit-built CW transmitter.
Seaward's main rig is a Yaesu FT-817 and a MFJ keyboard keyer. He says he can copy 30 wpm but can't operate his hand key at that speed. He likes to go hilltopping too, and for that he uses a car battery-booster to power the rig.
 When QRP won't do it, WA1FVJ resorts to brute force--20 and 40-meter amplifiers at 8-10 W output. His wife built protective cases for the amps. |
When asked what advice he might give to others aspiring to operate QRP, Seaward said: "I'll put it this way, a lot of patience and pray you have an understanding spouse." He said that sometimes 2 or 3 days would pass without a single reply to his CQ.
Seaward's antenna farm consists of the 6-meter dipole and an adjacent 2-meter and 70-cm 3-element beam--just above the roof of his house. Two sections of TV antenna-mast support the antennas. The beam is turned by hand--a 2-Armstrong rotator. Feedlines are ordinary RG-8 coax. For contesting on the HF bands, Seaward simply shorts the coax to one leg of the dipole and tunes the random wire with a small MFJ antenna tuner.
 Grid Locator (top) shows 6-meter contacts. Bottom Locator is for 2 meters. |
Well then, if
high power and super antennas are not necessary for great DX, then it must be
location. Yes, location is important. Seaward's home is in the city, but is
on a hill at about 200 feet elevation with an opening to the west.
 WA1FVJ has earned WAS, DXCC and VUCC from this station. His VUCC award was earned while operating QRP. [Photos by ARRL] |
Seaward says
it's fun to contact stations that have really big antennas such as those used
for EME--Moonbounce. He says he gets a really good signal report from them. His
next project is 70-cm QRP DXing. So far he's worked stations in NJ, NY, VT and
CT. Seaward can be reached at wingeddragon@peoplepc.com.
| Previous: In Brief | Next: The K7VVV Solar Update |
