How low can you go?

The autumn evenings are rapidly closing in on us now.  Being a little bored, and perhaps thinking a little of those poor people in the Bahamas being flattened by Hurricane Dorian, I wondered: 'can I get out with a wire antenna just thrown on the ground?'

For this, I just unrolled 10m of wire attached to a 9:1 balun - a multi-band end-fed antenna, and laid it on the ground.  I fed it with about 15-20W RF, and sent out a few CQs on FT8, to see what the reports looked like.

I think the results are quite remarkable, and certainly more than good enough to produce QSOs out to reasonable distances.  At 40m, I even managed to get a -18dB signal across the Atlantic!

So, if you have rubbish neighbours, a windy location, or some other restriction on erecting a tall antenna, these new digimodes really do allow you to continue your hobby effectively, regardless.

I think this might prompt a lot more experimentation!

Results at 40m; terminator correct at time of transmissions.

80m results.

Results at 60m.