N5OT Shortwave Radio Homepage

Welcome to the beginnings of my shortwave radio section. Here are some photos for a start.

November 1989
	This is a picture of me operating from the Galapagos Islands in November 1989 where I came in 5th place in the world in the CQ Worldwide DX Contest (my call was HC8U). Better ops than me (HC8N) have gone on to come in 1st place in the world from that exact location, but the entire station has been completely redone from the ground up. I've got a picture around here somewhere of what it used to look like, but the new station got a wonderful treatment by my friend Ward Silver, N0AX and his article made the cover of April 2002 QST.
February 2000
	This picture of a U-Haul truck with a portable tower and antenna shows my desperate attempt to get on the air and test out my new Oklahoma QTH in the ARRL DX contest in 2000. I operated 10M single band and did decently for a single yagi at 50 feet.
	Here's what it looked like inside the back of the U-Haul. That was a lot of fun.

November 2000

From November 2000 to January 2001 I used a wire antenna on a different part of the acreage to get in the CQWW CW and the ARRL 160 and the ARRL 10 and the CQWW 160M CW contests. I operated out of the back of the family minivan. That also was a whole lot of fun.

March 2001

In March we broke ground on a building. At this point two tower bases are already installed and two more are dug - or more accurately augered through the sandstone. The building is an interesting story. After years of pricing these buildings which you see all over this part of the country and resigning meself to paying 10K minimum and up to 17-20K for one as big as I really wanted with insulation, one day I opened up the right newspaper - the membership rag for the electric co-op I was a member of out in the country - and found suppliers who charged a lot less. That was a great day. I started shopping the building seriously and discovered even more good news - these prices included installation! I booked a date on the spot. It took them less than a week from delivery to completion. Incredible.

August 2001

I set aside this whole month to build in as much of the radio station as I could and also to get up the two remaining really big towers. This took place as scheduled on August 25th. It was a remarkable Tower Day.

September 2001

Kathy gets a bug in her ear to become a Real Estate magnate and buys "The Rental House." Suddenly I have no more time for Ham Radio until "The Rental House" is ready. There goes the fall and winter.

December 2001

Despite this major setback in my Ham Radio plans, I manage to get a fair bit done on the sly - Shhh!. By this time I have got up a number of experimental antennas, testing phasing and heights. By the end of December I have been able to test the antenna configurations in the CQWW, Sweepstakes, the 10M Contest, the 160M Contest, and the Stew Perry Topband Distance Challenge, though bursts of operating time have been restricted to blocks of hours here and there. The antennas are performing pretty much as expected. The most radical departure from my plan will be upgrading the design for 40 Meters from 2-element Yagis to 3-element Yagis. The 2-els didn't cut it in the Sweepstakes. Everything else worked out really well.

January 2002

On January 30th N5OT is hit by the Great Ice Storm that wipes out Oklahoma City and Kansas City. Photos would be too depressing. I completely lost the 10M antenna shown at the top of this page, which had been permanently installed on one of the 60 foot towers, and the 4-element 20 Meter Yagi I built for W6AQ in 1984. That antenna and I went back a long way. In California it never had to contend with ice. I had built another one just like it which thankfully was on the ground during the ice storm and was not damaged. Also completely lost was an 80M dipole at 140 feet. Sustaining major damage were the two Shorty Forties (a KLM and a HyGain), two homebrew 5-element 10 Meter Yagis, and a 160 Meter quarter wave vertical wire groundplane. Every single antenna at N5OT sustained damage to the point of requiring removal and repair. The good news? The station was far from "finished" and now I have had some first-hand experience with ICE. The tower-and-guy structures were completely undamaged. All-in-all, I think I got off lucky. I am looking forward to putting up the next round of bigger better Yagis which will laugh in the face of ice.

April 2002

"The Rental House" is about ready. Kathy is going to advertise for renters starting mid-April. I have learned a lot more about remodeling and plumbing. After I got the toilet set up at The Rental House, hooking it up at N5OT was no problem. I was getting tired of flushing with a bucket!

May 2002

I finally got all the antennas down after the ice trouble and basically all the towers are stripped and ready for another try. I did get an old Classic-33 Mosley tribander up on the tower closest to the shack. It turns, and can be used at the maksehift radio station in the tornado shelter. Between that tribander and the 160 vertical wire that hangs from the West tower, the station can pretty much get on all bands.

I was able to get four lengths of hardline cut and "connectored" and installed for each of the two big towers. They all stub out at the right height for their given antennas. There is coax for 10, 15, 20 and 40 on each tower. I mostly did it because all that random hardline laying around on the ground was making it very hard to mow the grass.

We got the house rented, but of course, now we're steeped in getting the apartment ready for a new tenant. That's a long story which includes our original tenant's suicide and also includes a windstorm that blew a tree onto the new tenant's car, which also took out her electric drop and meter, and also went through the roof of the apartment, causing ceiling and water damage inside. That's about fixed up now at this point.

Some day I'll get back to the radio station :)

Oh, and N5OT Radio Inc, got a new truck. At $1.30 per gallon of gas, the old truck cost $3.68 per trip to N5OT, and the new one costs $1.61 per trip. At that rate, the new truck will have completely paid for itself in 5.1 years. It was a good move now that all the really big heavy stuff has been moved up to N5OT.

Old = 1987 Dodge Ram 150 fullsized
New = 1996 Ford Ranger with the little motor

I let the cat out of the bag - some people at Dayton still didn't know I was the mystery operator affectionately named "The Hardware Addict" in the National Contest Journal (A National Ham Radio Radiosporting magazine) last year. Here are the photos to prove it, on the NCJ Mystery Article page.

This page last updated May 28, 2002