630 Meter DX from Wasilla, Alaska

Kl7L's 600m Part 5 station

Hi Bill - It's been a few years and I'm sort of glad my global wanderings have been curtailed to a point and I'm now based out of Alaska and via a couple of call signs (KL1X KL7UK etc) have ended up with KL7L. I still travel with the Oil Company but no China on the horizon.

I had a chuckle when you and Pete mentioned the new 630 and 2200m bands - and the real estate requirements - Well, I've been active with the experimental callsigns since 2003 and very glad we have finally got the bands - so a small form to fill out on the UTC web site and a 30 days wait to check you are not within 1Km radii of the co channel PLC on Trunk power lines, if no "disapprove" away we go - and I and many have! 

Just turn off all those nasty dimmers, LED lights and SMPSU wallwarts - plonk your radio on 474.2kHz USB and decode using WSPR or JT9 and I think youll be surprised on what you can hear even on a short typical 80m or topband wire or so.  There a lot of activity all around you

The station for both band is homebrew soldersmoke heaven - transverter/PA and filters/Couplers/Phase meters etc with only my ol' TS850 doing the prime driving, or a Hans  Summers U3S.

Size does matter - but my best RX for both bands is a 2ft long active probe up a pine tree, that's all - and some 300ft of RG6, and the Tx antenna is a 60ft high  Marconi or more over an inverted L with a 3 wire top cap all nested in the Birch forest - loads or radials but still very lossy in the Summer - nothing special here - Of course with the QRP per se we have to use CW or digital modes mostly but DX can be done - after all my closest active neighbor on 2200/630m is over 2000Kms away!

So, for the first time I sparked up on JT9 on 630m this early morning and first blood to QSO with VK4YB @ 5W EIRP!

 Not bad for a first qso on what is a fairly typical back yard antenna - so, there is hope and many people appear to be putting transcontinental signals out this power, so everyone is on the same playing field - just the ground and location and latitude will change things! It tends to be more flaky, lossy and geo/solar events tend to hit us hard up here compared with say Seattle.

On 2200m TX its a loop of thick wire hanging in the trees - literally 500ft circumference and a beefy coupler to deal with the 50A or so of antenna current to make the 1W ERP or so - still its getting out OK and again should be putting signals over the Pole to EU and across the Pacific as it becomes more and more dark up here.

I'm now caught up with past Soldersmoke pod casts and thanks to you and Pete for making me smile

Take care

Laurence KL7L  aka G4DMA et al
Wasilla Alaska 23rd Oct 2017