In our place, it is not easy to install some antennas. Especially for 160m .
All my antennas dipoles are fixed on the neighbor's wall on telescopics mast.
With a space of 4m available x 8m for the car parking.
For the inverted L !!!! What adventure !! It was necessary to see the neighbor and to ask the authorization to be going to put over his home a small wire for esthetic… After several discussions we finally could conduct the installation.
On this day I’ve a total for about 340 QSO, but achieved in an indescribable "hell."
Every day the QRN is at 59 +. The best that I could heard was 57 since the month of January.
The first month, the stations wonder if I was deaf or what?
It is not easy to manage a pile up without discipline in this hell. It is very discouraging.
Believe me, I failed to make QSY very often, I am not masochist, but too much HAM friends need to contact 9Q land on this band. For this reason that I tried to pursue again the activity during the time or the propagation goes well from Africa.
For Info any contact on 160m, 80, or 40m With a station at 100w is IMPOSSIBLE, 500W, it is small.. and difficult. So now with my new PA at 2 Kw CW/tune and others station with same power, we are able to make a QSO, above background noise, QRN. All others station with only 100w was never heard on the 160/80m bands.
I received couple of mp3 sounds for the 80 and 160m bands from a few stations outside Africa, notably RA6AX. Very often between the QSB and the QRN, it is not easy to be heard easily on these low frequencies. Totally different from the high bands from 20m and up, where I could hear other stations having 100w when I wasn't in pile-up. (during pile-up the stations with 100w did not heard).
I will like to be able to install a rhombic, a double K9AY. But not possible here…
Therefore here in Kinshasa since January 21, 2007,
for me the .....
"TOP BAND" is "STATIC CRASH BAND"
I am going in the next days to send a couple of few CQ on the "Magic band" while hoping to have some openings….. And more of calmness hi!! And will NOT be the "TRAGIC BAND", hi