Above is the K7WST station. I work CW on HF. QSL's to the US and Canada are done directly through the mail. Others are sent via the ARRL Outgoing QSL Service. My QSL card background below shows Mount Constance on the Olympic penninsula. The dark line of trees at the bottom are on Bainbridge Island. The telephoto picture was taken from our house.
My first try at Ham radio lasted 11 years as K2JOY, starting when I was 14. Almost 50 years later, I am now K7WST. When I was a kid, along with some friends on Long Island in New York State, if we reached New Jersey, we thought we were getting some pretty good DX. I did that with a Heath AT1 xmtr and a Heath AR2 rcvr. The antenna then was a Windom at maybe 15 feet off the ground, tops.
In getting started this year, along with buying the refurbished ICOM 737 xcvr shown above, there was the question of an antenna. I soon had both a 20M dipole and a 40M dipole strung across the parking area of my driveway. Our property is in the midst of tall douglas fir and alder trees, so the antennas are almost invisible -- even when standing directly under them. They worked well with one contact in the Ukraine. Still, I wanted omnidirectional, multiband capability. So, not wanting to go so far as a 50 ft. metal tower with Yagis, I decided to buy a commercial multiband vertical.
With all the various claims of each manufacturer and the anecdotal evidence provided by other users, it was hard to decide on the right thing to buy. So between price, band capability, and not wanting to lay out radials on the ground, I decided on the GAP Titan DX. It also helped that my son was in the Navy on a carrier, and the guy who designs the GAP antennas said he used to design them for carriers. Hey, you’ve got to hang your hat on something.
One of my first contacts with the GAP was South Korea, so I’m happy. I’ll just see how it goes. I'm no expert at this point, but I have managed to pick up 15 countries in the first 6 months. I get on the air a few times a week for about an hour each time. All the DX, except for a contact in the Ukraine, has been with the Gap Titan DX. It is somewhat noisier than either of the dipoles, but it can hear in all directions better.
Here are some pictures of the GAP. It is mounted on a 14 ft. 4X4 that is lag screwed into the corner of my house. The antenna starts at the 27 ft. point and reaches 52 ft. at the top. This gets it out of the way of humans and allows it to have a line of sight over the nearby hill crest. The antenna was built on the ground, except for the counterpoise, and then attached to the post when on the roof. The post pivots on one of the lag screws and was surprisingly easy to put in place. There is only a narrow line of site along which the antenna can be seen from off of our property. I have since bought some pulleys and rope which make taking it down much easier.
I have used an antenna analyzer on the GAP. It tunes well for the full bands of 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10. 80M was supposed to have only 100 kc of band below an SWR of 2. I wasn't smart enough to buy it with the right part of the band where I wanted it, so I had to send for a new top capacitor. Now it tunes very nicely from 3.5 to 3.6.
In early 2003 I added another antenna to try to get better coverage for Europe. It is a 20 meter double loop from the pages of W6SAI's HF Antenna Handbook -- page 5-4 to be exact. The antenna was deveoped by W2TBZ. It is aligned straight at England. So far it seems to work pretty well. It is not all the way up to 40 ft. as shown in the book, but the land falls away in the beam direction. It works for 20M, 12M, and 10M. I would include a picture, but photographing a wire antenna is like painting a portrait of the Invisible Man.
As of this date, August 23, 2003, I have contacted 31 foreign countries. I am not obsessed with DX, as some Hams are, but then again, I commute 4 hours a day to and from work. Maybe when I retire the action will increase.
Here are a couple of creations of mine for amusement: