Re: [IRCA] Fwd: Grayland Fishbarrel

[Bill Whitacre <bw@xxxxxxx>]

On Feb 19, 2016, at 3:15 PM, Neil Kazaross wrote:

> Bill wrote, "If you’re living along a coast and point mostly in one
> direction for your DX, the DKAZ with Vactrol remote termination control is
> ‘THE way to go!’"
> 
> I inquire, so Bill, you're convinced that you're getting better across the
> band F/B with a vactrol than with a fixed Rt? Or are you just using the
> vactrol to squeeze out a few dB more F/B in a part of the band?
> 
> Hmm.. me things that I need to test this.

---

The Vactrol is VERY handy on a DXpedition where I don't have time/energy to make multiple trips out to the antenna before dark to 'home in' on the proper single value of Rt.  The trade-off is a long run of CAT5 but that's fairly simple.  Once I find the best spot on the pot I don't play with it much so a fixed Rt after that would be just as good ... except that if I got inquisitive I could check things out with the Vactrol.

The first night I just shoved a 1K resistor at the back-end of the DKAZ and it showed the next day when I replaced it with the Vactrol and got up to 30dB nulls on Portland 750 and 25dB or more on Seattle 1000 & 950.  Given that I was facing around 280-290 deg. neither Portland nor Seattle were right 'off the back' so those aren't bad nulls -- depth or width!

What I want are my 'two days' back that I missed when the Monday flight I was on was diverted to Dulles after 'smoke in the cockpit.'  Left on Wednesday instead after a major 'hit' from the sun made things auroral for the first two days or more of the visit.  In a quick review of wav files that doesn't seem to have translated into much more than a couple of Philippine stations and more than the usual number of Aussies.
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