12/06/2006 | WB4HUX This 160 meter contest was a delight. The highlight of the contest was dinner with Ed, WB4JOZ, and his family on Friday night. Our families provided us with wonderful food, coffee, and pecan pie with ice cream by the fireplace during a break in the action. The sounds of the many CW signals coming from the speaker were great to hear on a winter night with great food and company. We had fun operating with an old hand key, Kenwood TS-430S, and about 20 watts into a newly placed inverted-L antenna. My son Sam, KI4FXQ, helped me shoot a fishing line with a slingshot up over a tree limb for the vertical portion of the 135 foot long inverted-L. We used a MFJ-971 portable antenna tuner at the base of the inverted-L, and ran the coax into the shack. The ground radials were simply various wires stretched out on the ground, including a 100 foot extension cord in one direction, an electrical fence ground stretched about 100 feet in another direction, and a wire running along the fence line in a third direction. We tuned the MFJ tuner once at about 1820 KHz for 1:1 SWR, and never re-adjusted it during the contest as we changed frequency. The monitored SWR stayed below 2:1 as we ranged up and down in the band. This simple set-up with the tuner at the base of the antenna was our first effort to do this, and it worked very well. We appreciate all of the operators who worked to copy our low-power, hand-keyed signal, and look forward to more operating on 160 meters. -- WB4HUX