Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Walker, who writes:
My listening post as it stands now
Time: 1600-1700 UTC
Location: Galena, Alaska (Rural central interior, halfway between
Nome & Fairbanks)
Equipment:Tecsun PL880, 225 foot long wire oriented north south and 225 foot long wire oriented east west, EmTech ZM2 Antenna Tuner, Workman Antenna Switch and DXEngineering RPA-1PLUS HF PreAmp
Paul, I hope you’re enjoying the good weather while it’s still summer! I imagine the days and nights are getting cooler already and soon, that beautiful stretch of Yukon will be frozen.
I’m happy to see you’re employing the ZM-2 tuner; it’s an effective little antenna manual tuner and doesn’t need a power source. Plus, if you ever get your ham radio license, you can use it in the field with QRP equipment. You’ve got a great setup there with quality components!
The only thing missing is the mosquito repellent…
Cheers from Fairbanks.
They are bad here sometimes. The skeeters seem some days like this eat me alive and carry me off
Very nice stuff.
Fun fact, Galena is also the name of a mineral that was widely used in crystal radios.
An antenna in Alaska might be quiet enough so a preamp can help. Here in Central Europe I would not need a preamp, but an attenuator.
I see no reason for a matchbox – besides some selectivity perhaps. I would prefer a small balun to match the the impedance and a terminating resistor on the other end. This type of antenna is called a Beverage.
A good resource for this is http://www.w0btu.com/Beverage_antennas.html.
The longwires do have a balun on them.
The tuner definately help
Do you have a terminator resistor at the other end of the antenna as any Beverage antenna should have? This makes the antenna aperiodic and mono-directional. you can even switch the direction, as W0BTU describes. See link above.
On an azimuthal map (http://ns6t.net/azimuth/azimuth.html) you will see that you could switch your west-east antenna between south-east Asia and the New England states or Near East. On the north-south antenna you could reduce the atmospheric noise coming frm the Pacific Ocean.