As always the CQWW Contests are a great source of entertainment and also a great chance to increase your DXCC totals…. This one was no different

This year I operated in a S & P (search and pounce) mode for approximately 8 hours in total. The rig I used was my Yaesu FT991a and the antenna of choice was my “Modified” Coastal-20 vertical antenna

I made 42 contacts in 22 DXCC entities covering 4 continents (NA/SA/AF/EU) using 10m-15m and 20m

I was able to contact stations in:

Alaska, Argentina, Aruba, Bonaire, Brazil, Canada, Canary Islands, England, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovenia, St Lucia, Turkey (Turkiye), United States of America

Now if everyone confirms I believe that there will be one new DXCC for my DXCC totals, but also there should be a couple of new ones for my 5 Band DXCC which I am hoping to complete sooner or later but most likely later

More on this once the confirmations come in via either LoTW, QRZ.com or EQSL.

For now its back to Playing POTA…

73b0b

Words to live by…..

“If it ain’t broke….. Don’t mess with it…“

One of the things on my “to do” list was swap out the 17.5 foot vertical wire on my Modified “Coastal 20” antenna with a 29 foot vertical wire.

I did the swap and then came back to the shack to do the SWR testing and also see where I was being heard and what I was hearing….

First issue found is that I no longer able to tune up on 40m using the built in tuner in my Yaesu FT991a….

On 10-12-15-17-20m it seemed to tune up quicker (2nd issue) but I did notice that I also had to tune up more often as I was searching and pouncing. On the plus side the signal reports I was given (after asking for an honest report as I was testing the antenna) seemed what I was expecting between S7 and S9. I was hearing most stations with no problems…

After careful consideration I decided to swap the 29 foot wire out and bring the 17.5 foot wire back. The reasoning for this was as I do a lot of S & P at home, I prefer not to have to re tune constantly…

And for the record the shorter wire is working exactly as well as it was working before I tried to improve things… There could be a lesson to be learned here…

To those who are participating in the CQ WW WPX Contest good luck and have fun.

UPDATED- Mar 30 0118 utc

I guess the antenna works on 15m

73bob