Whisky Eight Virgin Island (W8VI) and the location is near Cincinnati Ohio (for now)
My name is Gary Wilburn and have been licensed since 1974. The first call was WN8BYI and later acquired the calls WD8BYI, N4AUH from Quantico Virginia, KD6EW from Solano Beach California, NI8K was awarded from my upgrade to Extra in 1984 after moving to Cincinnati and being one of the last to take a ham exam at a FCC facility- this one was at the FCC office in Detroit. Using the vanity licensing program upgraded to W8VI in 1996. Chose W8VI because of the VI or my definition - Virgin Island. When all goes to plan - will have a home in the US or British Virgin Islands by 2006. One of my favorite place on this planet.
Antennas:
The current antenna used for 10,12,15,17,20 and 40 Meters
is the Sommer XP-807.
All this on a 26 ft (8 M) beam up in the
air.
The
complete antenna system is mounted on a Glen Martin hazer which is a elevator
type device that can be raised or lowered with a hand crank mounted at the base
of the tower. The hazer is needed to help raise and lower the Sommer antenna for
the many times it needs to be raised and lowered to adjust the antenna.
Most antennas without traps need quite a bit of tweaking to set the lowest SWR
on each band without affecting the resonance of the other bands.
The hazer is also great for raising and lowering this heavy antenna system weighing over 200 lbs to make periodic maintenance checks and repairs. The tower is a Rohn 25 model 75 feet (25 M) tall and is supported with Phillystran guy wire at 37 and 75 feet. The rotor is the Hi-gain TailTwister.
On the 80 meter band the antenna is a full-wave delta loop that is vertically polarized with one leg supported from the top of the tower and the other two legs are being supported 8 ft off the ground. Using a Q-section to help match the 600 ohms coming off the loop with about 45 feet of 75 ohm coax connected to the feed point. The Q-section allows a SWR of less than 2:1 from 3.700 to 3.950 Mhz without having to use an antenna tuner.
Operating Radio Equipment:
The main HF transceiver is the Kenwood TS-870S. I chose the 870 because of it's excellent transmit and receive audio along with it's functional and effective DSP filtering on the receive side.
Also have a Yaesu FT-847 for VHF/UHF work and a back up/ portable HF rig. The 847 has an excellent sensitive receiver with "OK" noisy DSP features and below average selectivity on the HF side. The 847 appears to be a rig where the design and quality engineering was focused on the VHF and UHF side. The HF side works OK but is only marginal for chasing weak DX and contesting.
I like using the W2IHY 8 band graphic equalizer with noise gate. A very well made product that allows you to sound more natural or can allow you to have that piercing DX audio to work those large pile- ups. Matched with a Heil Gold line microphone and the HC-4 DX mic cartridge this system allows good versatility in transmit audio.
More later when I get some time...
Thanks for looking and 73,
Gary W8VI
