Kansas And Ohio QSO Parties With NVIS Dipole

I ran across this on Larry's List. A great resource and I suggest you look it up and get on the list! Mostly midwest hams and good links for selling/buying and information like this post. I reached out to Bob WØAO and got his permission to post. Check this out, we need to try this at our next outing!

Special Contributer Bob Kimbrell WØAO -

After returning home from Keystone Park for the After Beryl Breakfast Activity I was disappointed that I had only worked 3 counties in the Kansas QSO party and they were all in far western Kansas.  I had been using a 40 meter vertical at the park and most of my signal was going over Kansas.  I constructed a low NVIS 40 meter dipole with a reflector wire on the ground underneath in my yard (HOA neighborhood) to try to fill in some more counties:


With that antenna I was able to work 20 Kansas Counties in 2 hours.  The unexpected bonus was that I was also able to work 28 counties in the Ohio QSO party during the same 2 hours.  The Kansas QSO's were all CW on this antenna. (The 3 from the park had been on SSB)  The Ohio QSO's were 17 on phone and 14 on CW.  The kicker is that this antenna is only 3 feet off the ground.  It is made of some of my favorite antenna materials:  Electric fence posts ($1.89 each at Lowe's) and speaker wire (about $40 for 500 feet if you split it in two -- even cheaper on Ebay)  All the stations were S9 or above and I had no trouble making any of these QSO's.  Two operators said "Hi Bob" on CW and I looked them up later.  K0I was Mark KI0I that we some times hear "motorgrader mobile".  K0N was Russ K0VXU, president of the Kansas City DX Club.  I had fun building and testing this antenna.

73 DE,

Bob Kimbrell, W0AO