| Day | UTC Date | Perseus 1 | Perseus 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun PM/Mon AM | Nov 15 | Put up 160' DKAZ @ 55 deg. w/900 Ohm fixed Rt in dark | - |
| Mon PM/Tue AM | Nov 16 | Added Vactrol Rt to 160' DKAZ @ 55 deg. | - |
| Tue PM/Wed AM | Nov 17 | 160' DKAZ @ 55 deg., Vactrol Rt | - |
| Wed PM/Thu AM | Nov 18 | 160' DKAZ @ 55 deg., Vactrol Rt | Added 160' DKAZ @ 155 deg. w/900 Ohm Rt for LatAm |
| Thu PM/Fri AM | Nov 19 | 160' DKAZ @ 55 deg., 795 Ohm fixed Rt | Added Vactrol Rt to 160' DKAZ @ 155 deg. |
| Fri PM/Sat AM | Nov 20 | 160' DKAZ @ 55 deg., 795 Ohm Rt | 160' DKAZ @ 155 deg. w/Vactrol Rt |
Flights from DCA to BGR are daily arriving in Bangor at around 12:30pm. The drive to Quoddy House takes about 2:30 and sunset is 4pm so you're toying with darkness when you arrive to put up an antenna.
Such was the case on Sunday, Nov. 15, when I arrived at QH. I had things going by 4:40pm but, in the rush and darkness, had used a reel of wire that was a mix of #20 and #22 gauge wire with wire-nutted splices in it. Try to model that in EZNEC! I used a fixed Rt for the first night of 900 Ohms which I'd used in past trips ... all at the end of 600' of RG58.
The next day, Nov. 16, I changed out the fixed Rt with a Vactrol Rt at the end of about 500' of CAT5. The beauty of the Vactrol Rt is that, so far as I understand, the antenna just sees a pure resistance based on a voltage you feed it from the shack via the CAT5 cable. Other, passive methods of controlling Rt remotely depend on matching transformers and don't work well on very distant antennas - more than a couple hundred feet away.
I did this around 9am and was a little disappointed on the null I was getting on WBZ - mid-band and straight off the back of the antenna. About 30 minutes later, as the sun continued to rise, I returned to WBZ and found a huge, sharp null -- like what one would see on a nice, pure groundwave signal! I believe this is what I was seeing and that the earlier readings were on a combination groundwave/skywave signal. In any event, the huge null on WBZ was not quite in the same place on the pot as ones for WEEI and WCRN - close but a little 'off.' I left the Vactrol set for the deep WBZ null and ran it that way for the next 3 days.
On Nov. 18 I added a 160' DKAZ @ 155 deg. with 900 Ohm fixed Rt for LatAm. Finding stations to null of the back of something facing south from Lubec is a little more difficult and I wasn't sure I'd picked the right value of Rt. I only had one Vactrol set-up so replaced the Vactrol on the TA DKAZ with 795 Ohms [680 + 100 + 15 Ohm discrete resistors] and switched the Vactrol over to the LatAm antenna.
The number in [ ] is the difference in terminated and shorted dB - the 'null' - and a value of 30 - 40 dB is quite good.
Things remained in this configuration until I left on the morning of Nov. 21.